Team Automations: Automatic Messages to Your Cleaner and Team

A team automation is a message Haven sends to the people who work on your listings, by itself, when something happens. Tell your cleaner about every new booking. Remind them three days before a checkout. Flag a same-day turnover. Email yourself whenever someone reports a problem.

They live in the Team lane of the guest journey, Communication → Message automations — beside the guest messages on the same day, so you can see what your cleaner hears next to what your guest hears. Pick Team at the top to see only them; the old Tasks → Automations link opens it. Automations started by a job or a schedule rather than a day of the stay are cards on the Jobs and schedules row of Whenever this happens, under the timeline; one started by a cancellation or a date change sits in the Team and you column of that event's row. They use the same editor as your guest message automations, with one difference: they go to your team, never to a guest. See The Guest Journey.

Before you start

Add the people you want to reach under Tasks → Contacts, each with a phone number, WhatsApp, or email and the roles they cover. To message "the listing's cleaner", also pick a turnover cleaner for each listing under Tasks → Setup. See Fulfillment: Tasks, Contacts, and Payouts.

What Haven already sends

Whenever this happens has a card for each message Haven sends without any setup, so you do not write a second copy of one. Most are on the Jobs and schedules row; the two a stay sets off are on that event's row, beside what the guest gets. Example on a card shows what it reads like:

Job offer, when a job is given to someone.
New time, please confirm, when a stay moves and someone holds a job on it (on the Dates or guests change row).
Morning-of reminder, at 8am on the day, to whoever accepted the job.
Job cancelled, when a stay or a job is cancelled (on the Stay cancelled row).
Sent back, when you send a finished job back with a note.
Payout setup, when you pay someone who has not set up how to be paid.

The morning-of reminder and the cancelled notice have a switch; switched off, one folds into a thin row marked Off on the journey, and clicking the row opens it to switch back on. The rest are part of how a job works and are marked Always on; hover it for why.

Set up a recommended automation

The Team lane comes filled in with the automations most hosts want, even before you have added anyone: the three-day reminder before a clean, the same-day turnover alert, the week ahead every Monday, and repairs to your handyman. Until they are on they look faded, with a dashed outline and a Recommended tag.

Press Set up on one:

When nothing is missing, it is on straight away. Nothing sends until the next time its event happens.
When it needs someone you have not added yet, such as Needs a cleaner on your team, Set up opens Add a contact with that role already picked. Save them and the automation turns on.
When it needs a cleaner chosen for each listing, Set up takes you to Tasks → Setup to choose one. Come back and press Set up again.

Other ready-made automations that fit the roles on your roster appear the same way once you have someone to send them to. Open one with Edit wording to change the words.

The ready-made automations include:

Tell my cleaner about every new booking
Remind them three days before a clean
Flag a same-day turnover
Send the week ahead every Monday
Say thanks when I approve a job and Tell them when they are paid
Email me every problem report, Text me when nobody takes a job, Text me when a clean starts, and Tell me when a stay's dates change
Brief whoever is doing a guest add-on, for chefs, provisioners, drivers, and concierges
Send restock needs to my provisioner and Send damage and repairs to my handyman
Tell my concierge who arrives tomorrow

When a guest reports something broken

When a staying guest writes that something is broken or not working — no hot water, the Wi-Fi is down, a leak — Haven can pass it on. It notices this in two places: your AI replies to OTA guests hand the conversation to you with The guest reported something broken or not working, and your property assistant offers to tell you when a guest mentions it in the chat.

You always get the message in Messages. Who else hears about it is off until you choose, under Tasks → Setup → When a guest reports something broken, or from the Pass on repairs guests report card on the Messages row of Whenever this happens, which shows as Recommended until it is set up:

Text me sends you a text with what the guest said and a link to the conversation. It needs a number under Settings → Account & Profile → Notifications, and it is the same switch as Guest reported something broken there.
Send it to picks someone on your team, usually your handyman. They get the address and what is broken, the way they prefer to be reached, and it goes on your thread with them. Add a handyman adds one without leaving the page.

Turn on either, both, or neither. The same person is not sent a second report for the same stay within 12 hours, so a guest writing "still no hot water" does not text them again.

Build your own

Press Add under a day in the Team lane, or New team automation at the end of the Jobs and schedules row under Whenever this happens, then answer three questions.

When does it start? Pick the event:

A stay moment: inquiry received, booking requested, approved, declined, or expired, booking confirmed, booking canceled, before check-in, check-in day, during the stay, check-out day, after check-out, stay dates or times change, and same-day turnover.
A job moment: a job is created, accepted, turned down, started, finished, cancelled, or moved to another time, nobody has taken a job, a problem is reported, you approve a job, you send a job back, and someone is paid for a job.
A repeating schedule, such as every Monday morning.

Stay moments cover every reservation on the listing, including ones imported from your PMS or an OTA.

Who gets it?

Whoever is on the job: the person who accepted it, or the person it is out with.
The listing's cleaner: the turnover cleaner you set for that listing, and the backup if you tick it.
Everyone with a role: every active contact who has one of the roles you pick.
Specific people: the same contacts every time.
Me: your account email, and a text to your alert numbers.

"Whoever is on the job" is offered only when the event is about one job that someone holds.

What does it say? Add steps in the editor: Message, Email, Wait, and Wait for a date. A Message step sends a text, an email, or whichever the person prefers. Waits can count from check-in, checkout, or the time the job is due, so "9am three days before checkout" is one step.

Use the insert menu to drop in details that fill themselves in for each send: the job name, the day and time it is due, the listing and its address, check-in and checkout times, the guest's first name, how many guests, pets, when the next guest arrives, the pay, and a link to the job page.

If a listing has a guidebook written for your team, such as a cleaners' guide, its link is in the insert menu too, under Your guidebooks. Haven fills in the link of the guidebook on the listing the job is at, so one automation covers every listing that has one. See More Than One Guidebook per Listing.

Press Send me a test on a step to get it yourself with sample details.

Photos

Insert Photos of how it should look into a message and Haven attaches the job's reference photos, then the reference photos from its checklist steps. An email shows them as a gallery. A text carries up to four as picture attachments.

Someone whose first choice under Tasks → Contacts is WhatsApp gets the text on WhatsApp, in your words, without the photos. If WhatsApp cannot deliver it — the number is not on WhatsApp, for example — Haven sends the same message as an ordinary text to their phone number, and the thread shows which way it went.

What your team never gets

Door codes and step-by-step instructions are never put in a message. They stay on the job page, which only the person holding the job can open.
The link to the job page is included only for the person who holds that job, or for you.
Guest details are limited to first name, number of guests, pets, and dates.
Texts are held between 9pm and 8am at the listing's local time and sent in the morning.
One contact gets at most 20 automated texts in a day.
A message is skipped when it no longer applies: the job was cancelled, the stay was cancelled, or the person is no longer on the job.

When they reply

A reply by text, WhatsApp, or email comes back to you. A card appears in Calendar → Inbox with what they said, and the whole conversation is kept in two places: on the task, under Who's on it, behind Messages with and their name, and on the person, under Tasks → Contacts → Messages. You can write back from either.

A text that starts with PROBLEM files a problem report on their job, the same as reporting one from the job page. Photos they text back attach to the job.

You also get a text when someone replies. Switch it off with Cleaner or contact replied under Settings → Account & Profile → Notifications. On the same page, Texts from your own team automations controls the texts an automation sends to you.

Approve a job or send it back

A finished job shows Approve and Send back on the task.

Approve records that you looked and were happy. It can start an automation, such as a thank-you.
Send back needs a note about what to fix. The job opens again, the person gets your note, and their job page shows it at the top. Pay waits until the job is finished again.

To hold every payment until you have approved the job, turn on Wait for me to approve each finished job before the pay goes out under Tasks → Setup. It applies when auto-pay is on.

Turn one off or delete it

Each team automation's card has an on and off switch. The menu beside it duplicates or deletes it. Turning one off stops anything it had not sent yet.