Using Automate

Create recurring content schedules, queue qualified Research topics, control delivery, and review monitored knowledge-source changes in Automate.

Use Automate to run supported recurring workflows for one client. The current workspace includes three distinct automations:

Create content on a schedule works through an ordered topic queue and saves each generated project to the selected destination.
Keep knowledge base current checks approved website sources for changes and waits for human review before replacing saved knowledge.
Review monitoring watches selected Google Business Profile locations and Yelp business profiles, prioritizes what needs you, and prepares replies. You approve each Google reply, or explicitly allow Serena to send eligible new-review replies; Yelp replies are always published by you.

Automations remain scoped to the selected client. Confirm the client, topics, sources, destination, and cadence before turning one on.

Create a content schedule

Select the client and open Automate.
Turn on Create content on a schedule or choose Settings.
Choose Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. The cadence creates one new Copywriter draft each day, week, or month from the next pending topic. It does not refresh keyword data or work through the whole queue at once, so a long queue takes as many runs as it has topics.
Add one manual topic per line. These topics are the fallback after the Research queue is empty.
Choose where finished drafts should be saved: Projects, Projects + WordPress, Projects + Webflow, or Projects + GitHub pull request.
Complete any required destination connection, review the settings, and select Turn on automation.

The Automate header shows how many content schedules are active against the subscription allowance. Turning a schedule off stops future scheduled runs without deleting its settings, queue, or created projects.

For WordPress or Webflow, verify the correct client connection before enabling delivery. GitHub delivery requires a connected repository and an approved existing Markdown or MDX article folder. It creates a reviewable pull request and does not merge it automatically.

Queue saved Research topics

Create the content schedule before sending topics to it. Then:

Open Research → Saved research for the same client.
Open the saved list and select up to 100 qualified keywords.
Choose Add to Automate.
Select the intended content schedule.
Add optional article direction for each selected topic.
Confirm the queue action.

Adding a topic only creates a queue item. It does not generate content or record a completed usage event. Normal scheduled-work rules apply when Rankability later starts the draft.

The same saved Research keyword cannot be added to the same schedule twice. A similar phrase or a keyword from another list can still be a separate item, so remove semantic duplicates before queueing them.

Manage the Research queue

Open the content schedule’s Settings to review its queue. Pending Research topics run before manual fallback topics.

For a pending item, you can:

move it up or down in the queue;
edit and save its optional content guidance; or
remove it before generation starts.

To clear several at once, select the pending items you want — Select all pending selects them all — then choose Remove selected. Remove all pending clears the whole pending list in one action. Removal applies to pending items only; a topic that is already running or completed keeps its record.

A queue item can be Pending, Running, Completed, or Failed. Open the created draft or content project when a project link is available. If an item failed before creating a project, use Retry topic after correcting the underlying problem. Do not add the same topic again merely because a scheduled run is still active.

When the Research queue becomes empty, the schedule uses the manual fallback topics in its settings. Add more qualified Research topics when you want deliberate queue order and topic-specific guidance.

Keep the knowledge base current

The knowledge-monitoring automation is separate from scheduled content:

Open Automate and choose Settings for Keep knowledge base current.
Select the saved website pages that should be monitored.
Choose the available monitoring cadence and save the automation.
Use Check now when you need an immediate comparison.

When a monitored page changes, Review changes compares the saved knowledge with the live page. Apply the update only when the new content is correct, or dismiss it to keep the approved saved version. Detection alone never replaces the source Serena uses.

Permanent URL moves require a separate redirect decision. Review the original and destination URLs before updating the source. A content difference at the destination can still require its own review after the URL is changed.

See Serena sources and data connections for source eligibility, processing states, and knowledge-review boundaries.

Review monitoring

Review monitoring watches the review profiles you select for one client, collects the reviews without an owner reply, and helps you respond. The card on Automate opens Review work for the reviews themselves and Settings for what is watched. Settings holds a Google and a Yelp source, each showing whether it is monitoring, paused, or not connected.

Asking Serena to draft needs an approved brand voice in the client’s knowledge base — without one you can still write the reply yourself.

Monitor Google reviews

Google monitoring starts off and needs at least one connected Google Business Profile location; Settings links you to the client’s integrations when none is connected. The default Ask before sending mode requires your approval for every reply.

Select the client and open Automate.
Choose Settings on the review monitoring card and stay on the Google source.
Turn on Monitor Google reviews and select the locations Serena should watch.
Choose Ask before sending. If you want automatic replies to eligible new reviews, turn on Prioritize reviews with Serena and choose Send eligible replies, described below.
Choose Save and start audit. Once monitoring is on, the same dialog saves your changes.

The first audit reads the existing reviews for every selected location. Reviews that were already there stay separate from reviews that arrive after you turned monitoring on. Open Settings → Audit details for progress, Google review totals, the last check, and unassessed reviews. A new review raises an in-app notification that opens its place in the queue.

Work the review inbox

Review work holds both sources in one place. Needs review and Completed separate outstanding work from finished work, and All, Google, and Yelp narrow it to one source. Reviews are grouped as urgent, high priority, not yet assessed, and routine, each row showing the reviewer, rating, source, date, and the start of the review. Expand a row and choose Review and reply, or Review and reply on Yelp, to open it; a completed row opens with View work and says how it ended. Use Next and Previous to page through.

More Google filters opens the Google-only view of the same work, where you can filter by Needs attention, All pending, New, Earlier unanswered, Replies to check, or Completed, each with its count. Needs attention appears when prioritizing is on.

When Google stops returning the details of a review you have already worked on, the inbox groups those rows and says so rather than dropping them. Monitoring restores the details on its own, your saved work stays available, and the notice says when the Google connection needs checking instead.

Open a Google review to see its location, star rating, reviewer, and comment. Then:

Choose Ask Serena to draft for a reply grounded in the client’s approved knowledge base. The draft names the sources it used.
Edit that text, or write your own.
Choose Approve and send to Google to post exactly what you see, or Skip to take the review out of the queue.

Rankability reads the review again before sending. If it changed since the draft was prepared, or it already has an owner reply, the reply is refused rather than posted against the wrong version — refresh the queue and start again.

A reply whose outcome Google did not confirm moves to Replies to check. Use Check reply status on Google to settle it instead of sending a second reply.

Completed work stays readable. A finished row says whether the reply was submitted to Google, skipped, or answered outside Serena, with the date it was resolved. Open a skipped review and choose Return to unanswered when you decide to reply after all.

Rankability keeps the review’s identity and reply-work history in this workspace. Google review content is cached only temporarily for a faster queue and is not added to the permanent knowledge base. The monitor checks Google for changes, and Google is checked again before any reply is sent; a changed or already answered review cannot be sent from an old preview.

Let Serena prioritize the queue

Tick Prioritize reviews with Serena in Settings when you want the queue sorted by what needs you first. Serena assesses pending reviews in bounded batches, so an existing backlog takes time to work through. Audit details shows how many remain unassessed and how far the audit has got.

Each pending review is then labeled Urgent, High priority, Routine, or Not yet assessed, with a short reason — a possible safety, privacy, billing, or conduct concern, an issue the customer says is unresolved, a service experience or low rating that needs a closer look, or positive feedback. When the reason comes from the review’s own wording, the quoted phrase is shown beneath it. Opening the review adds a suggested next step, and Needs attention lists urgent reviews first, then high priority, newest first within each group.

A rating of two stars or less is never left as routine, and a review older than roughly three months is not treated as an urgent incident on wording alone — it stays important without displacing something happening now. You can change any review’s priority yourself and add a short reason for your team; your choice is what the queue then shows.

If the assessment falls behind, the card says the priority checks are delayed and that Serena is retrying. The review work itself stays visible either way.

Allow eligible automatic replies

In review Settings, select the exact locations, turn on prioritization, then choose Send eligible replies and Allow eligible replies. That permission lasts 30 days. You can switch back to Ask before sending or pause monitoring at any time. A newly connected location is never added to the selected scope on its own.

Serena considers only reviews created after you allowed automatic replies: fresh, written, five-star English praise assessed as routine with high confidence. She drafts from the client’s approved knowledge and runs an additional safety check before sending. A complaint, question, uncertain assessment, unsuitable draft, changed review, or review already answered on Google stays for your approval. Older unanswered reviews never receive automatic replies from this setting. Each submitted reply has a record in Completed, marked as sent automatically by Serena. An uncertain Google result goes to Replies to check; it is not automatically sent again.

Monitor Yelp reviews

Yelp monitoring is separate and read-only: Serena checks daily and prioritizes what she finds, and you publish the reply on Yelp yourself.

Open Settings on the review monitoring card and choose the Yelp source.
Paste the client’s Yelp business profile address — a plain https://www.yelp.com/biz/ link with no review filters on it.
Choose Start monitoring. Use Add another Yelp profile for a second location, and the switch beside a profile to pause it.

Check details on a profile reports whether the available recommended reviews were checked, whether the daily scan limit cut the pass short, or whether the first audit is still running, along with the number of reviews Yelp reports and the time of the last check. Each daily audit reads up to twenty pages, an edited or removed review may not be detected, and saved review text expires after seven days while the work history is kept.

Open a Yelp review from the inbox to set or change its priority, read the reason and the quoted phrase behind it, and prepare a reply. Ask Serena to draft grounds the reply in the client’s approved knowledge, Save draft keeps it, and Copy reply puts it on your clipboard to publish on Yelp. Open the profile link to publish. If the review changed after the draft was saved, Rankability says so and asks you to save it again before copying.

When you have published, Mark complete records that — publication on Yelp is not verified by Rankability — or use Skip, and Reopen either one later. A reply Serena observes on Yelp closes the item on its own. Each item keeps a work history of what happened and when. If Serena cannot assess a review after three attempts, set its priority yourself.

Pause or ask Serena

Turn the switch off to pause. Collection stops and no further reviews are added, while everything already recorded stays available for audit.

You can also ask Serena for the current state, to turn monitoring or prioritization on or off, or to add or remove a location. Explicitly name the selected locations when asking her to turn automatic replies on. A question or hesitant phrasing is not treated as permission to change settings.

Usage and safeguards

Adding or reordering queue items does not generate content. Scheduled tracking and monitoring are recorded separately from ordinary on-demand work and are not blocked by the pooled on-demand windows. Provider quotas, connection failures, request-rate controls, schedule allowances, quality checks, and other operational safeguards can still delay or stop a scheduled run.

Review every generated draft before publishing it. A completed automation proves that the configured Rankability workflow reached its saved result; it does not prove that an external website changed unless the project records a successful delivery or publishing result.

Troubleshooting

Add to Automate is unavailable — Confirm that you are in a saved Research list, selected at least one row, and already created a content schedule for the same client.
A schedule is missing from the picker — Return to the intended client and create or verify the schedule in Automate. Schedules cannot receive topics from another client.
A topic says it is already queued — Open that schedule’s Research queue. Existing membership is reused instead of creating a duplicate item.
A schedule is on but no run is planned — Confirm that it contains a pending Research topic or a valid manual fallback topic and that the schedule is within the active allowance.
A destination is unavailable — Reconnect the selected WordPress, Webflow, or GitHub destination and verify that it belongs to the current client.
A topic failed — Read the saved error, correct the source, destination, or setup problem, then use Retry topic when the item offers it.
A monitored page changed but Serena still uses the old text — Open the pending review. Rankability preserves the approved version until you apply the change.
Google review monitoring cannot be turned on — Connect a Google Business Profile location for this client first. If the card says monitoring is temporarily unavailable, contact support; background processing is not running.
A review reply will not send — The review changed or already has an owner reply. Refresh the queue, reopen the review, and prepare the reply again.
Serena will not draft a review reply — Add an approved brand voice to the client’s knowledge base, or write the reply yourself in the queue.
A review is missing from the queue — Check the filter. A reply that was sent, skipped, or answered outside Serena moves to Completed, and a skipped review can be returned to the unanswered list from there.
An automatic reply was not sent — Open New to check whether Serena left it for approval. Confirm that permission has not expired and that the review meets the narrow eligibility rules. Older reviews always require approval.
A Yelp profile will not connect — Use the plain business profile address, with no review filters or extra parameters on it. If Settings says Yelp monitoring is temporarily unavailable, try again later.
A Yelp review says its text expired — Saved Yelp review text is kept for seven days. The next daily check can refresh it, and the work history remains either way.