Turn every learner action into the next teaching move — automatically.
Vacademy's Automation Engine is a Zapier-for-academies: visual workflows that listen to triggers from across the platform (attendance, quiz score, payment, enquiry, drop-off) and fire actions (WhatsApp, certificate, course unlock, CRM step). No code. No glue scripts. Live in minutes.
- 50+ triggers · 80+ actions
- Visual editor · branching · delays
- Drip schedules · cohort tagging
- Live event log · replay safe
Why teams switch
The status quo is costing your team time and money
Manual ops eats every academy at scale
Send certificate when 80% attended. Nudge after 2 missed classes. Open chapter 5 only if quiz 4 > 70%. Each rule sounds simple — and each one requires 4 humans, a spreadsheet, and a hope.
Zapier doesn't speak academia
Generic automation tools have triggers for Slack and Trello but not for 'learner dropped below 80% attendance' or 'mock score < mastery threshold'. You end up writing custom webhooks anyway.
Drip campaigns are dumb pipelines
Most LMSes only offer time-based drip ('open chapter 2 after 7 days'). That's not engagement — that's calendar-spam. Real engagement is conditional on what the learner *did*.
Inside the engine
Build, test, and observe a real workflow
Visual editor on the left, live event log on the right. Every fire is logged with payload + condition outcome + action result.
How a workflow runs
From a trigger to an outcome in milliseconds
Visual editor + real-time event bus. Workflows are versioned, dry-run-able, and have a live event log so you can debug exactly what fired and why.
Pick a trigger
50+ triggers: attendance threshold, quiz score, certificate eligibility, payment received, enquiry created, course completion, lead score change, doubt unresolved, and more.
Add conditions + branches
Filter by cohort tag, pricing plan, learner segment, or any property. Add IF/ELSE branches, parallel paths, and delays (minutes / hours / days).
Wire actions
80+ actions: send WhatsApp / email / push, release certificate, unlock chapter, create CRM task, enroll in remedial course, raise a webhook to your stack, and more.
Test, deploy, observe
Dry-run against historical data, deploy with one click, watch the live event log show every fire. Edit the workflow without breaking ones already in flight.
What's inside
A real automation engine — not a settings page
Visual workflow editor
Drag-drop nodes for triggers, conditions, branches, delays, and actions. Multiple workflows can listen to the same trigger; each runs in parallel and is independently logged.
50+ academia-specific triggers
Attendance crossings, score thresholds, dwell-time signals, drop-off detection, mid-attempt abandonment, payment retries, lead score deltas, certificate eligibility.
80+ first-class actions
WhatsApp template send, email campaign, push notification, certificate release, course unlock, batch reassignment, CRM stage change, custom webhook, AI-personalised content fire.
Conditional drips
Move learners along a drip schedule based on what they did, not just when they joined. 'Open Chapter 2 when Quiz 1 > 70% OR when 3 days passed' — yes, both.
Dry-run + replay
Test any workflow against the last 30 days of real events before going live. See exactly which learners would have been affected. Replay any past event for debugging.
Event log + audit trail
Every fire is logged with timestamp, trigger payload, condition evaluation, and action outcome. Useful for support, compliance, and 'why didn't X happen?' debugging.
Why operators love it
Ops headcount you didn't have to hire
Typical mid-size academy replaces 3 ops/CRM execs with workflows after rollout.
Live event bus fires workflows in real time — no polling, no batch delay.
From paid-plan churn workflows + renewal nudges firing exactly when needed.
Cohort engagement scores after conditional drip + behaviour-based nudges.
Plays well with the rest of the stack
Every other Vacademy module is a trigger or an action
The Automation Engine isn't a side feature — it's the connective tissue that makes the rest of the platform actually act on the data it collects.
Auto-Attendance signals fire WhatsApp parent digests + mentor escalations in seconds.
Online Exam results trigger remedial micro-courses, certificate release, or upsell offers.
AI Doubt Chatbot escalations open mentor tasks in the CRM with full conversation context.
Payment events open / close access to courses with no manual operator step.
Built for every team
Who uses the Automation Engine
Operations & CRM Leads
- Replace WhatsApp ops teams with auto-fire workflows
- Wire up renewal + dunning workflows without engineering
- Audit every fire for compliance and 'why didn't X happen?' debugging
Marketing & Growth
- Build conditional onboarding journeys per pricing tier
- Run A/B tests on nudge timing, copy, and channel
- Hand control to non-tech teammates without engineering risk
Academic Heads
- Auto-route at-risk learners to mentors
- Gate certificate release on real performance, not just enrollment
- Create per-cohort engagement playbooks that actually fire
Customer spotlight
Distance-learning academy · 12,000 active learners
“We had 4 'ops execs' whose entire job was running WhatsApp nudges from a spreadsheet. After three weeks with Vacademy Automation, we redeployed all four to higher-value work. 38 production workflows now fire 6,000+ events a week — nothing slips, nothing duplicates, everything is logged.”
— Head of Operations, Distance Learning Academy
Frequently asked
Common questions from buyers
How is this different from Zapier or n8n?+−
Zapier / n8n are generic — Slack, Trello, Stripe. The Vacademy Automation Engine is built for academies: triggers like 'attendance < threshold', 'quiz score < mastery', 'mock test percentile change', 'certificate eligibility met'. The integration points to other Vacademy modules are first-class, not webhooks. You can still call Zapier from inside a workflow if you need to fan out further.
Can non-technical staff build workflows?+−
Yes — the visual editor is intentionally non-code. Ops, marketing, and academic teams build workflows directly. Role-based permissions let leads approve workflows before they go live, and dry-run lets them test against historical data before committing.
What happens if a workflow misfires?+−
Every fire is logged. You can replay any event after fixing the workflow, undo any single action that has an undo (e.g. revoke a wrongly-issued certificate), and edit a workflow without breaking instances already in flight.
Can we call external systems?+−
Yes. Custom-webhook action lets you POST to any URL with templated payload. Useful for syncing to your HRIS, your custom CRM, or specialised tools like a finance system.
How fast does a workflow fire after the trigger event?+−
Median latency in production is under 1 second from event-emit to action-fire. Workflows are processed by an async event-bus rather than a polling cron, so there's no '30 min batch delay'.
Explore the platform
Pairs well with
From spreadsheet ops to workflow engine
Bring your top 3 ops rules — we'll wire them live.
List the three things your ops team manually re-runs every week (attendance nudges, certificate release, dunning, anything). In a 30-min session we'll wire all three as workflows you can audit and edit.