GoHighLevel workflows: how automations work, with 5 I build for every client

A trigger decides who gets in. An action is what happens to them next. HighLevel adds a few action types that control the flow: Wait holds someone until a time, a date, an appointment or a reply, If/Else splits people by conditions, and a Goal Event jumps a contact straight to a later step the moment they do the thing you wanted, like booking.

You can put more than one trigger on the same workflow, and every one of them enrolls people when its conditions match. Filters on the trigger narrow it down, for example only one specific form, or only incoming calls.

Go to Automation > Workflows. The landing page gives you three options: Build using AI, Browse Templates, or Create Workflow to start from scratch. Templates (HighLevel calls them recipes) are under Create Workflow > Select from Template, with categories like lead nurture and onboarding and a preview before you load one.

AI Builder is the one I use most now. You type what you want in plain English, it builds the triggers and actions and writes the message copy, and you go back and forth with it to change things. You can name the form, pipeline, tag or custom field you want and it picks those exact records from the account. You can also ask it to turn re-entry off, set business hours or change the sender.

It's good, but check it. When I had it build a database reactivation campaign, it sent two texts back to back with no wait between them. I'd put a 24 hour wait in there. Sometimes it misses things, so treat what it builds as a first draft. One sentence of prompt also isn't enough for something you'd hand a client. Put the business details and what you're trying to fix in the prompt.

Open the Settings tab inside the builder before you publish anything. These five decide most of what goes wrong in the workflows below.

Saved and published are two different things in HighLevel. Save keeps your changes. The Draft/Publish toggle in the top right decides whether it runs for real. A draft won't trigger or send anything.

Test Workflow (top right) runs it on a contact you pick. HighLevel itself says the test isn't perfect, especially if you reuse the same contact, so do a real run with your own phone number and email before you hand it over. Since October 29, AI Builder can run the test for you from its chat (it's a Labs toggle for now) and tells you what ran, what got skipped and what errored. The test sends real messages and adds real tags, so use your own contact, not the client's leads.

When something doesn't fire, open the workflow and click Execution Logs. Every action for every contact is there, errors are highlighted, and Highlight Contact Path shows on the canvas exactly which way someone went and which steps they skipped. Enrollment History tells you why they left: completed, removed by this workflow, or removed by another one.

If you edit a live workflow, contacts already in it pick up changes to the steps ahead of them. A Wait they're already sitting in keeps its old timing.

This is the one every business needs first. A lot of these companies generate leads, but the owner is busy on a job and doesn't have time to follow up. If someone fills out a form and nobody gets back to them, they go down the list on Google until somebody answers. You want to be the first person to respond, because that's who people actually work with.

Trigger: Form Submitted, filtered to the quote or contact form (or Facebook Lead Form Submitted if they run ads).

Actions: assign the lead to the owner, add a "new lead" tag, create an opportunity in the pipeline, and send the owner an internal notification with the lead's details. Then text the lead right away: "Hey, this is John from John's Plumbing. Did you just fill out a form to get more information on our free quote?" Send a welcome email too. Wait 10 minutes, send a second text, then keep following up daily. If you want the phone to ring as well, HighLevel's Call action rings the business first and connects them to the lead.

Turn on Stop on Response, or add a Goal Event for when they book, so the moment they reply or book the chasing stops and the owner takes over. If nobody books after a couple of weeks, I tag them stale and use Add to Workflow to drop them into a long-term nurture, so the business stays top of mind for months.

The fastest way to sell this: fill out a local business's form yourself and see if anyone texts or emails you back. Most don't.

Your local plumber or electrician is out doing the job. They can't answer the phone and they don't have a receptionist. When a lead gets no answer, they call whoever's next in line, and whoever answers wins the business. Missed call text back sends them a text within a minute so the conversation keeps going.

The quick version is a setting, not a workflow: Settings > Phone System > Voice > Voicemail & Missed Call Text Back. Turn it on, write the message, send yourself a test. The one I use is basically: "Hey, it's [name] from [business], sorry I missed your call. What can I help you with?" HighLevel recommends a ring timeout of 10 to 20 seconds before a call counts as missed.

The catch, from HighLevel's own doc: the built-in version texts every missed call, so someone who calls three times in five minutes gets three texts. HighLevel recommends using the workflow recipe instead. Trigger: Call Details, incoming, status not answered, busy or voicemail. Actions: check for a "texted back" tag with If/Else (or wait about 20 minutes), send the SMS, add the tag, and notify the owner. Turn on re-entry so it works for their next missed call next week. The full build is in Missed call text back.

When the caller texts back, it lands in Conversations and the owner replies from their phone. If you want AI to answer those texts and book the job, that's where a Conversation AI agent comes in.

On my own calendar the confirmation email and text go out, then reminders 24 hours before, an hour before and 30 minutes before, which keeps no-shows as low as possible. For a home service business I usually do three days, one day and one hour.

Trigger: Appointment Status, filtered to the calendar and the booked or confirmed status. Appointment triggers always let a contact back in for each new appointment, so re-entry won't stop the next booking.

Actions: send the confirmation by SMS and email with the date and time. Then Wait, set to "an upcoming appointment" and a duration before it, and send each reminder. I like an If/Else at the start so a first-time customer gets a different intro text than a returning one. You can also turn simple reminders on inside the calendar's own settings if you don't need branching.

No-shows get their own workflow. Trigger: Appointment Status set to no-show. Text something like "Hey, this is Joe, we came by but missed you. Is there a better time to reconnect?" plus an email, wait a day, try again, and keep it going because they were interested. If they never reply, Add to Workflow puts them in the nurture. The money is made in the follow-ups.

More Google reviews is the easiest thing to explain to a business owner. I send out review requests to my own customers, and my AI responds to the reviews that come in.

Trigger: Pipeline Stage Changed, when the job moves to the completed stage (or Appointment Status set to showed, for appointment businesses).

Actions: wait about an hour after the job, then use the Send Review Request action. The message and review link live in the Reputation settings. First try is always SMS, because people are more likely to do it from a text. If they haven't left one, follow up by email. The full setup is in Google review automation.

Leave re-entry on so a repeat customer can be asked after their next job too.

This is the one I run on my own business. From the second a video of mine goes out, if somebody comments on it, my Instagram DM agent reaches out to them: "Hey, so you were interested in Hamza's video. Are you looking to start an agency or are you looking to buy his services?" Then an AI agent in my DMs carries the conversation and sends people to different offers, websites and programs depending on what they're looking for. It's basically selling for me 24/7.

Trigger: Instagram Comment(s) On A Post, under Facebook/Instagram Events. Pick the page and post, then filter by Contains Phrase or Exact Match for a keyword ("YES", "GUIDE") and turn on Track First Level Comment Only. Connect Instagram first under Settings > Integrations, and the Instagram account has to be linked to a Facebook business page.

Actions: Reply In Comments with a short "check your DMs", then Instagram Interactive Messenger set to Reply to Comment via DM, with buttons or quick replies ("Start an agency" or "Hire you", "Send the guide"). Each button creates its own branch, so you can tag them, send a link, or hand off to the AI agent. A Wait (default 1 minute) sits on the messenger step, and anyone who doesn't tap goes down the timeout branch.

Use Interactive Messenger here, not the plain Instagram DM action. HighLevel's doc says a comment alone doesn't open Instagram's 24-hour messaging window, so a normal DM to someone who only commented can fail. HighLevel also ships a recipe for exactly this (Instagram Comment Automation) if you want to start from it. And replies the workflow posts won't trigger it again, so you can't loop yourself. Every setting is in Instagram comment to DM.

HighLevel shipped a lot of workflow updates on October 28 and 29. These are the ones that change how you'd build the five above. The full list is in my roundup for the week of October 26.

Workflows are included on every plan ($97, $297 or $497 a month as of October 2026), and standard actions don't cost anything extra to run. What you pay for is what they send: texts, emails and calls are billed on usage.

Premium actions and triggers are different. Inbound and custom webhooks, Google Sheets, Slack, Marketplace and LC apps count as premium executions. Each sub-account gets 100 free for life, then it's $0.01 a run, or you buy a Workflow Pro bundle. Workflows keep running if you go over, you just pay the overage rate.

AI actions are billed on their own. The AI Agent action is premium: you pay for the tokens the model uses, plus any premium tools it calls. Standard tools inside it like Send SMS or Add Tag don't add a premium charge. The action picker shows pricing details on the steps that cost extra, so look before you add one.

If your plan supports rebilling, you can pass premium workflow usage on to clients with a markup, under the client's Manage Client > Rebilling > Workflow - Premium Features. HighLevel's default is 1.2x.

Business owners don't buy "workflows". They buy not losing the lead who called while they were on a roof. So find the leak first: fill out their form, call after hours, look at how many Google reviews they have against the competitor down the street. Then show them the fix running in a demo account.

These five are the base I put in almost every account, and the real value is in customizing them to how that business actually works. You could build this for a local business and charge a setup fee plus a monthly fee you set, because the automations keep running every month. It's a real business model and I run my agency on it. My full step-by-step for that is in Start an AI automation agency.

Check in this order: it's published (saving alone doesn't do it), the trigger filters match what actually happened, re-entry isn't blocking a contact who already went through, the Time Window isn't holding the message, and Stop on Response didn't end it early. Then open Execution Logs for that contact. HighLevel's own tip is to test with a brand new contact, because an old test contact may already be blocked by re-entry.