The Workflow Edit | Practical AI Tool Tutorial
How to Use Relay.app Without Generic AI Instructions
When you repeat the same copy-paste-send sequence every week and keep skipping steps, Relay.app can chain those tasks into one flow that runs automatically — no manual handoffs.
Dear Suzannah
Dear Suzannah, every Monday I manually copy lead information from our contact form into the CRM, then send a welcome email, then add the person to our mailing list. It takes 40 minutes and I always forget at least one step.
Chain the three steps into one automated flow that runs the moment a form is submitted.
The real use case
Automate a three-step lead intake process — form submission to CRM entry to welcome email to mailing list — so no step gets skipped.
No prompt needed: use this workflow instead
This tool works through its interface, not a blank prompt. Follow these steps to get the result you need.
- Go to relay.app and sign in. Click ‘Create workflow’ and choose ‘Start from scratch.’
- Set the trigger: select your form tool (e.g. Typeform, Google Forms, or your web form integration). Choose the event ‘New form submission’ and connect your account.
- Add the first action: select your CRM (e.g. HubSpot, Pipedrive). Choose ‘Create contact’ and map the form fields — name, email, company, phone — to the corresponding CRM fields. Add a note field with the submission date.
- Add the second action: select your email tool (e.g. Gmail, Outlook). Choose ‘Send email’ and set the recipient to the lead’s email from the form. Write a welcome email template with the lead’s first name as a variable.
- Add the third action: select your mailing list tool (e.g. Mailchimp, ConvertKit). Choose ‘Add subscriber’ and map the email and name fields. Set the list or tag to [new leads].
- Turn on human approval on the email step if you want to review each welcome email before it sends — this adds a checkpoint without adding manual data entry.
- Test the workflow by submitting a test form entry and confirming all three actions complete in order. Check the CRM, inbox, and mailing list to verify each step worked.
- Activate the workflow and monitor the first few real submissions in the Relay.app run history to confirm everything fires correctly.
Make the result less generic
- Map specific form fields to CRM fields by name so the data lands in the right columns, not a generic ‘notes’ dump.
- Add a human approval checkpoint on the email step if leads vary in quality and you want to catch spam submissions.
- Include a tag or list assignment in the mailing list step so new leads are segmentable from day one.
- Test with a real form submission before activating so you catch field-mapping errors before they reach a live lead.
- Monitor the first week of runs in Relay.app’s history to confirm the workflow fires on every submission, not just most of them.
Quick human check
- Did the test submission create a complete CRM record with all form fields populated correctly?
- Did the welcome email send to the right address with the lead’s first name filled in (not a blank variable)?
- Did the lead appear on the correct mailing list or tag, not the default list?
- If you added a human approval step, does the email pause until you approve it — and does it send promptly after approval?
- Check the Relay.app run history: did all three actions complete for the test, or did any step fail silently?
