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Product Agents

Playbook · Interactive

Building a back-office automation agent

Scheduled and event-driven work that runs without a person watching: the six steps of a run, a cost model with a waterfall, and a rule spec and run receipt to copy.

What the automation agent does#

A back-office agent runs a written rule on a schedule or an event, with nobody watching each run. The rule, the locked list and the receipts do the work a reviewer would do in a copilot.

Rule: overdue invoice remindersIllustration
Standing rule · v7

Every weekday at 6:00, send a reminder for invoices over 30 days overdue and open a CRM task for the account owner.

Run #2121 · Trigger
TriggerWeekday 06:00 · rule v7
List41 invoices locked at 06:00New matches wait
Actions37 reminders · 37 CRM tasksUnder the $10k limit
Exceptions4 to finance: 3 over $10k, 1 disputedOwner: AR lead
Receipt37 changed · 4 held · 0 failed
Checks5 sampled · 0 wrong recipientsPass
A made-up example, filled in up to step 1.

Step 1 of 6

A schedule or an event starts the run

A rule fires on a schedule or an event, like a new invoice or a changed record. The run checks that the trigger still holds before doing anything.

Levers

  • TriggerWeekdays at 6:00, or a record change
  • Freshness checkRead the record again before acting
  • OverlapSkip a run while the last one is still going

Patterns

In the cost model: Runs per month

Step 2 of 6

Scope the run and lock the list

The run lists the exact items the rule covers and locks the list. New matches wait for the next run instead of slipping into this one.

Levers

  • ScopeInvoices over 30 days overdue, one region
  • CapAt most 200 items in one run
  • New matchesWait for the next run

Patterns

In the cost model: Items per run

Step 3 of 6

Act only within written rules

For each item, the agent takes the actions the rule allows: a reminder, a CRM task. Anything past the limits becomes an exception, not an action.

Levers

  • Allowed aloneReminder email, CRM task
  • LimitsUnder $10,000; one reminder per customer a week
  • Acting accountA named service account with only these grants

Patterns

In the cost model: Cost per run

Step 4 of 6

Send exceptions to a person

Items outside the rules go to a named owner with the reason and the record. The owner decides; the agent doesn’t retry around the rule.

Levers

  • ReasonsOver the limit, disputed, missing data
  • OwnerThe accounts-receivable lead
  • Response timeSame business day

Patterns

In the cost model: Exception rate

Step 5 of 6

Write a receipt for every run

The run records each item as changed, held, skipped, failed or unknown, with before and after values. A failed item is retried once, then reported.

Levers

  • Item outcomesChanged, held, skipped, failed, unknown
  • RetriesOnce, after checking the change didn’t already happen
  • Where receipts liveThe rule’s run history, not an inbox

Patterns

In the cost model: Failures and retries

Step 6 of 6

Monitor and test the rule

Someone samples finished items against the record, and every bad item becomes a saved test case. A kill switch stops new runs and keeps the receipts.

Levers

  • Sampling5 items a day, checked against the record
  • AlertsException rate over 20%, any wrong recipient
  • Kill switchStops new runs and further writes

Patterns

In the cost model: Checked results

1 / 6 Trigger

The cost model#

Change any lever. The waterfall shows the hand work checked results remove, and what the platform, exceptions, failures and checks add back.

Example inputs, not benchmarks. Every default is made up, except the published platform prices under “Platform price”, which link to the vendor’s page. Replace each number with the team’s own.

A Today, by hand
Example

Every rule firing, scheduled or event-driven.

Example
Example
Example

6,000 items a month take 400 h by hand.

B Exceptions and failures
Example
Example

Often longer than the hand work: the easy items are gone, and the person reads why the rule stopped.

Example
Example
Example

Finding what half-happened and finishing it by hand.

To a person8%
Fail first try3%
Stay failed1%

The agent attempts 5,520 items; 480 go to a person and 66 fail even after a retry.

C Checks
Example

Confirmed in the system of record, not read off the run’s status.

Confirmed95%

5,181 checked results a month, of 5,454 completed items.

Monitoring

Example
Example
Example
D Platform price
How the platform charges
Example

Each step that does work: sending the reminder, creating the task.

List price

The platform costs $1,137 a month for 11,371 billed actions.

Salesforce Agentforce: $500 per 100,000 Flex Credits, and a standard action uses 20 credits. At that rate, one standard action costs $0.10; a voice action uses 30 credits. The pricing page doesn’t say whether failed actions use credits.

Agentforce pricingList price, checked September 29, 2026. Contracts can differ.

Zapier: $49 a month for 2,000 tasks, billed annually (Professional). At the full allowance, one task costs $0.0245. Zapier counts a task when a step completes; failed actions are not counted. Larger tiers change the price per task.

Zapier pricingList price, checked September 29, 2026. Contracts can differ.

By hand today$18,0006,000 items
With the agent$7,420per month
Change−$10,580−58.8%

Where the monthly cost goes

  • Total
  • Lowers cost
  • Adds cost
  1. Hand work today$18,000
  2. Checked results−$15,543
  3. Platform price+$1,137
  4. Extra time on exceptions+$2,160
  5. Cleaning up failures+$745
  6. Monitoring and checks+$920
  7. Net monthly cost$7,420

The axis starts at $0.

Point at a bar to see how the step is calculated.

How each bar is calculated
StepCalculationMonthly
Hand work today6,000 items × 4 min × $45/h$18,000
Checked results5,181 checked results × 4 min × $45/h−$15,543
Platform price11,371 actions × $0.10 (failed tries billed)+$1,137
Extra time on exceptions480 exceptions × (10 min − 4 min) × $45/h+$2,160
Cleaning up failures66 failures a retry didn’t fix × 15 min × $45/h+$745
Monitoring and checks(15 h upkeep + 109 samples × 3 min) × $45/h+$920
Net monthly costToday’s hand work plus every step above$7,420

Cost per result

The platform, exceptions, failures and checks come to $4,963 a month. Divided by attempted items, then by checked results, next to a person doing the item by hand.

  • Per attempted itemCounts items that failed or weren’t confirmed.$0.90
  • Per checked resultThe number to manage.$0.96
  • By handMinutes by hand × hourly cost.$3.00

The platform price alone is $0.22 per checked result.

People’s time

260 h freed a month.

  • Checked results+345 h
  • Extra time on exceptions−48 h
  • Cleaning up failures−17 h
  • Monitoring and checks−20 h
  • Exceptions and unfixed failures stay with people: the hand work stays, plus the extra minutes.
  • Freed hours lower the bill only when the team hires less or takes on other work.

What counts as a checked result

In this model, a checked result is an item the run completed and a check confirmed in the system of record. A green run status is not a check.

Templates#

Copy or download. The spreadsheet carries the numbers from the cost model above, with live formulas.

Standing rule: rule name

Highlighted text is a blank to fill in. The words inside are an example.

1. The rule

Trigger
Weekdays at 6:00, or when an invoice turns 30 days overdue
Scope
Invoices over 30 days overdue, EU region
Owner
AR lead, with a named backup when away
Version
v7, changed date by name

2. What the agent may do alone

ActionLimitActing account
Send a reminder emailOnce a week per customerA service account with only these grants
Open a CRM task for the account ownerOne open task per invoiceThe same account
Add a note to the invoiceNever edits amountsThe same account

3. What needs a person

  • Invoices over $10,000
  • Disputed invoices
  • A customer contacted in the last 7 days
  • More than 200 items in one run: stop and ask before acting.

4. The list

  • The run lists the exact items and locks the list when the run starts.
  • New matches wait for the next run.
  • An item that changed since the list was made is checked again before any action.

5. Failures and retries

  • A failed item is retried once, after checking the change didn’t already happen.
  • An item that fails twice goes to the owner with the error.
  • A retry never sends an email a second time.

6. Kill switch and alerts

Kill switch
Pause on the rule’s page: stops new runs and further writes; receipts stay.
Who can pull it
Owner, backup, ops on-call
Alerts
Exception rate over 20%, failures over 5%, any wrong recipient.
Owner leaves
The rule pauses until someone takes it over.

7. Success metric

Metric
Cost per checked result under $X.
Checks
5 finished items a day, compared with the record.
Review
The rule and its limits, every quarter.

What the real products do#

Three automation platforms from the teardowns, and one finding from each.

  • Zapier Agents & AI by ZapierZapier

    An approval step reports “Success” after a decline

    Zapier’s Request Approval step can keep running after a decline or a timeout, and lists all three outcomes as Success. Only the step’s Decision field tells them apart.

    Special step run statuses in Human in the Loop actionsRead the teardown
  • Airtable Omni & field agentsAirtable

    Creating an AI field approves every future value

    With Run automatically on, an AI field fills every record and runs again when its inputs change. One column can then hold older-prompt values, current ones and a person’s edits.

    Using Airtable AI in fieldsRead the teardown
  • Agentforce ServiceSalesforce

    A time-ordered record of every step

    Agentforce observability keeps every processing step in order, with per-step timing and error text. Deflection, by contrast, is scored by a model reading the session, not checked against the record.

    Understand Agentforce Observability KPIs and ToolsRead the teardown

How the numbers were sourced

The published prices in the calculator come from the vendors’ own pages, read on September 29, 2026: Salesforce Agentforce, $500 per 100,000 Flex Credits, and a standard action uses 20 credits and Zapier, $49 a month for 2,000 tasks, billed annually (Professional). Every other calculator number is an example input. The product findings come from the teardowns, whose sources were checked September 28, 2026.

The pattern behind the standing ruleLet the agent act alone only within written rules

Inside the rule the agent acts; outside, the agent asks the owner.