Running automations more than once

On this page:

• ShouldAutomationRunForSubscriberAction
• Sending automation mails more than once

In certain cases you might want to allow subscribers to run through an automation more than once.

This can be done by extending/overwriting the necessary actions in the Mailcoach config file.

ShouldAutomationRunForSubscriberAction#

The first one is the ShouldAutomationRunForSubscriberAction class. You can overwrite this action by changing the mailcoach.automation.actions.should_run_for_subscriber config.

An action that allows duplicate runs could look like this:

use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Audience\Models\Subscriber;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Models\Automation;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Shared\Traits\UsesMailcoachModels;

class AllowDuplicateShouldAutomationRunForSubscriberAction
{
    use UsesMailcoachModels;

    public function execute(Automation $automation, Subscriber $subscriber): bool
    {
        if (! $subscriber->isSubscribed()) {
            return false;
        }

        if (! $automation
            ->newSubscribersQuery()
            ->where("{$this->getSubscriberTableName()}.id", $subscriber->id)
            ->exists()
        ) {
            return false;
        }

        return true;
    }
}

If you compare it to the original, you can see that just the first check (where we check if the subscriber is already in the automation) has been left out.

Sending automation mails more than once#

A second class you might want to overwrite is the SendAutomationMailToSubscriberAction, which by default has a check that makes sure the mail hasn’t been sent to the Subscriber before. You can change this class in the mailcoach.automation.actions.send_automation_mail_to_subscriber config key.

An implementation that would allow duplicate sends could look like this:

use Illuminate\Support\Str;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Audience\Models\Subscriber;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Actions\SendAutomationMailToSubscriberAction;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Automation\Models\AutomationMail;
use Spatie\Mailcoach\Domain\Shared\Models\Send;

class AllowDuplicateSendAutomationMailToSubscriberAction extends SendAutomationMailToSubscriberAction
{
    public function execute(AutomationMail $automationMail, Subscriber $subscriber): void
    {
        // The check from the default action here has been left out.
        
        $this
            ->prepareSubject($automationMail)
            ->prepareEmailHtml($automationMail)
            ->prepareWebviewHtml($automationMail)
            ->createSend($automationMail, $subscriber);
    }

    protected function createSend(AutomationMail $automationMail, Subscriber $subscriber): Send
    {
        // The check from the default action here has been left out.
    
        return $automationMail->sends()->create([
            'subscriber_id' => $subscriber->id,
            'uuid' => (string)Str::uuid(),
        ]);
    }
}

Important to note here is that if the SendAutomationMailJob fails, restarting it will create another send, which could result in more emails sent than intended.