Sage Automation Rules: Route Every Lead to the Right Pipeline Automatically
Sage Auto is powerful on its own — it watches your emails, bot conversations, forms, and tickets, and creates contacts and deals without you lifting a finger. But every business is different. An enterprise enquiry should land in your Sales pipeline. A support complaint should become a ticket. A casual question from a student should be ignored. Automation Rules let you encode that logic so Sage always does the right thing.
⚡ Available on Pro and above
Sage Automation Rules are part of the Sage CRM feature set, included with every Pro, Scale, and Enterprise plan. Rules are evaluated in real-time every time Sage processes an incoming item — no delays, no manual review.
What are Automation Rules?
By default, Sage Auto processes every email, bot conversation, form submission, and ticket using a single global setting — it either creates a contact and deal, creates a ticket, or ignores the item based on what the AI recommends. Every item that matches goes into the same default pipeline.
That works well when you have one product and one sales process. But most growing businesses have multiple pipelines — Enterprise Sales, SMB Sales, Customer Support, Agency Projects — and different inbound sources should flow into different ones. A rule lets you say: "If this item matches these conditions, do this specific action and put it in this specific pipeline."
Rules override the default behaviour of Sage Auto on a per-item basis. Every time Sage processes a new item, it checks your rules first. If a rule matches, that rule's action and pipeline are used. If no rule matches, the workspace default applies.
Rules vs. default Sage Auto settings
Default Sage Auto
One global switch per channel. All matching items go to the same default pipeline with the same action.
With Rules
Each item is evaluated individually. Different keywords, priorities, or channels route to different pipelines with different actions.
How rules work — the logic
A rule has three parts: a channel filter, a set of conditions, and an action.
Channel filter
Each rule can target a specific channel (Email, Bot conversation, Form submission, or Ticket) or apply to Any channel. A rule for "Email" only fires when Sage processes an email — it never interferes with bot conversations, even if the conditions would match.
Conditions (AND logic)
Each rule can have one or more conditions. All conditions must pass for the rule to match — this is AND logic, not OR. A condition checks one of three fields: Priority (is High / Medium / Low), Content (the AI summary or subject contains or does not contain a keyword), or Channel (for "any channel" rules that need a channel check inside).
Action + pipeline
When a rule matches, its action is used instead of the Sage Auto default: "Create contact & deal" (and route to a specific pipeline), "Create ticket", or "Ignore". For "Create contact & deal" you pick exactly which pipeline the deal lands in. Leave it blank to use the workspace default.
First-match wins
Rules are evaluated in priority order (highest number first). The first rule that matches wins — Sage stops checking and uses that rule's action. This means you can place specific, high-priority rules at the top and a catch-all rule at the bottom, and only items that don't match the specific rules will fall through to the catch-all.
Priority is per-channel
Because rules are filtered by channel first, priorities are scoped to within that channel. An Email rule at priority 10 never competes with a Bot rule at priority 10 — they live in separate evaluation spaces.
This means you can freely number your email rules 1, 2, 3 and your bot rules 1, 2, 3 without any cross-channel conflicts. You only need to think about priority order within the same channel.
The one exception: rules set to Any channel compete with all channel-specific rules. If you have an "Any" rule at priority 15, it beats a channel-specific rule at priority 10 for every channel. To avoid unintended overrides, keep "Any" rules at a lower priority number than your channel-specific ones.
How to create your first rule — step by step
- 1
Go to Sage → Rules
Open your Appalix dashboard. In the left sidebar, expand the Sage section and click Rules. You'll see a list of all your existing rules (empty on first visit) and a "New rule" button in the top right.
- 2
Click "New rule"
A modal opens with the rule builder. Every field has a sensible default — channel is set to "Any channel", the action defaults to "Create contact & deal", and a single condition row is pre-filled for you to customise.
- 3
Name your rule
Give it a descriptive name that explains what it does — for example "High-priority enterprise email → Sales pipeline" or "Support complaints → Ticket". You'll see this name in the rules list and in backfill result notifications, so make it meaningful.
- 4
Choose the channel
Select which channel the rule applies to: Email, Bot conversation, Form submission, Ticket, or Any channel. Picking a specific channel makes the rule more precise and prevents it from accidentally matching items from other channels.
- 5
Add your conditions
Each condition row has three parts: Field (Priority, Message / summary, or Channel), Operator (is, contains, does not contain), and Value. Click "Add condition" to add more rows — all conditions must match (AND logic). For example: Priority is "high" AND Message/summary contains "enterprise".
- 6
Set the action
Choose what happens when this rule fires: "Create contact & deal" (lead enters your CRM), "Create ticket" (a support ticket is opened), or "Ignore" (the item is skipped entirely). If you choose "Create contact & deal", a pipeline selector appears — pick the exact pipeline this rule routes into, or leave blank to use the workspace default.
- 7
(Optional) Enable owner notification
Toggle on "Notify workspace owner when this rule fires" if you want an alert logged whenever this rule matches. Useful for high-value rules like enterprise enquiries where you want instant awareness.
- 8
Set the priority
Enter a priority number. Higher numbers are evaluated first. Leave it at 0 if you only have one rule, or use 10, 20, 30 for a range of rules so you have room to insert new ones between existing ones later.
- 9
Save the rule
Click "Save rule". The rule is immediately active — from this point on, every item Sage processes will be checked against it before the default action runs. There is no additional deployment step needed.
5 rule examples to get you started
Not sure where to begin? Here are five rules that work for most businesses right out of the box.
Enterprise email → Sales pipeline
EmailPriority is "high"
ANDMessage/summary contains "enterprise"
→ Create contact & deal → Enterprise Sales pipeline
High-priority emails that mention enterprise are likely from large accounts. You want them in a dedicated high-touch pipeline, not mixed in with SMB leads.
High-priority form submission → Sales pipeline
Form submissionPriority is "high"
→ Create contact & deal → Sales pipeline
Paid ad leads marked high priority by the AI are hot. Fast-tracking them to your sales pipeline with no manual review keeps response times low.
Support complaint → Ticket
Any channelMessage/summary contains "complaint"
ANDMessage/summary contains "refund"
→ Create ticket
Support-flavoured contacts should not enter your sales pipeline. Turning them into tickets routes them to your support team instead.
Bot chats mentioning pricing → Sales pipeline
Bot conversationMessage/summary contains "pricing"
→ Create contact & deal → Sales pipeline
Anyone who asks a bot about pricing is showing purchase intent. Routing these to your sales pipeline lets your team follow up proactively.
Low-priority catch-all → Ignore
Any channelPriority is "low"
→ Ignore
Place this rule last (lowest priority number). Low-quality items that no specific rule caught are silently skipped — they don't clutter your pipelines or ticket queue.
Managing your rules
The Rules page at Sage → Rules is your central control panel. From here you can:
- 🔁
Toggle rules on and off
Use the toggle icon on any rule card to disable it without deleting it. Disabled rules appear in a separate "Disabled" section and are not evaluated — useful for seasonal rules or rules you want to pause temporarily.
- ✏️
Edit a rule
Click the pencil icon on any rule card to re-open the rule builder modal with the existing values pre-filled. Change any field and save — the update takes effect immediately.
- 🗑️
Delete a rule
Click the trash icon to permanently delete a rule. Deleting a rule does not undo any actions it already took — contacts and deals it created remain in your CRM.
- 🔢
Adjust priority
Edit any rule and change its priority number to reorder evaluation. Higher numbers are checked first. You do not need to use consecutive numbers — 10, 20, 30 leaves room to insert rules between existing ones.
Tips and best practices
Start specific, add catch-alls last
Build your most specific rules first (e.g. "enterprise email") at high priority. Add a general catch-all rule (e.g. "low priority → ignore") last at the lowest priority. The specific rules get first refusal, the catch-all handles everything else.
Use 10-point priority gaps
Number your rules 10, 20, 30 rather than 1, 2, 3. If you later need to insert a rule between two existing ones, you have room without renumbering everything.
Test with "Process existing"
After creating a rule, go to the Sage dashboard and click "Process existing". This runs your rules against already-analysed items so you can see immediately which ones match without waiting for new inbound.
Ignore > delete
Instead of deleting low-quality items from your pipelines manually, create an "Ignore" rule for the patterns that consistently produce junk. Sage will silently skip them before they ever enter your CRM.
Use "Any channel" sparingly
"Any channel" rules match everything — emails, bots, forms, and tickets. Only use them for truly universal conditions (like "always ignore low priority") and keep them at low priority so they don't override your channel-specific rules.
Turn on notify for high-value rules
For rules that catch enterprise or high-priority leads, enable the "Notify workspace owner" toggle. You will get an alert the moment a high-value match is processed — so you can follow up within minutes, not hours.
Summary
Sage Auto handles the mechanical work of processing every inbound item. Automation Rules handle the intelligence — making sure each item is routed to the right pipeline, handled with the right action, and never mixed in with items that deserve different treatment.
A rule takes less than two minutes to create. The payoff is a CRM that organises itself correctly from the first contact, every time — without anyone on your team having to review and re-route leads manually.
Start with two or three rules based on your most common patterns, run "Process existing" to validate them, and add more as you spot opportunities. Most teams end up with five to ten rules that cover 90% of their routing logic.
Ready to route leads to the right pipeline automatically?