What is an 'Automation User' and how does it work?
The automation user feature is an extremely useful feature for teams that are using automations. The automation user is a singular, hidden user that is used for all automations.
More importantly, the admin can also authorize this automation user with credentials for a cloud drive (e.g. google drive, SharePoint etc...) so that all automations on these cloud storages also run using this single user.
Such a design avoids a lot of hassle of having all the users in the organization connect their CloudFiles accounts and cloud libraries in order for the automations to work.
In this article we cover a few common questions about the Automation User.
You do not need to explicitly create / add the automation user. The automation user is a hidden user that is created by default when the account is created. Automation user also does not need a license to work.
Automation user is used for any and all automations that you run using the HubSpot / Salesforce apps for CloudFiles. E.g. any workflow actions that are executed by the HubSpot app or any flow actions executed by the Salesforce app uses the automation user to perform the action.
This means that everything from create dataroom automations, copy file automations or even share & attach resources on CRM records use the automation user.
By default the automation user can only perform actions related to CloudFiles library (e.g. creating datarooms or creating folders in the CloudFiles library).
In order to use automations with external cloud drives such as SharePoint, the admin must authorize the automation user. In order to authorize the automation user, follow the simple steps below -
- Go to Settings > Integrations > Cloud Library
- Click on the cloud library that you'd like to connect.
- Click on the 'Connect' button on top right. Standard authentication will follow in a new tab.
- Once logged in, the cloud library will show the 'Connected' prompt.
That's it, now your automation user is authorized to use this cloud library and would be able to perform the required automations.
The process is shown in the GIF below -
No. This authorization is only used for automations. In order to access the files and folders in the respective cloud library from the CRM record, your internal users will still have to login to their cloud libraries with their respective user logins.
As an example, consider that you have authorized the automation user to use SharePoint and then run an automation which creates and connects folders for all newly created CRM records. This automation creates and connects the folder to 10 CRM records. Now if your internal users try to access this folder from the CRM record, they will need to login to Sharepoint using their own credentials in order to see the contents of the folder.
Moreover, in case you have SharePoint permissions set such that some of the users don't have access to these folders, they won't be able to see the contents even after the login.
The automation user will continue to function as long as you have appropriate number of licenses added to your account. The number and type of licenses determine the number of actions you can execute per month. Once this limit is exhausted, your automations will start throwing errors.
