--- title: "Automating your work with agents" description: "What agents are, how to set one up, when they run, what they may do without asking, and what to do when one is paused." url: https://help.garba.ai/en/articles/10742527-automating-your-work-with-agents collection: "Getting Started" updated: 2026-11-03 language: en --- # Automating your work with agents What agents are, how to set one up, when they run, what they may do without asking, and what to do when one is paused. An agent is a job you hand to Garba once, and Garba then does it for you every time it is due. You write what it should do in plain words, and choose when it should run: every Monday morning, after each of your meetings, an hour before a customer call, or when a deal moves to a new stage. Some things people use agents for: - Draft a follow-up email after every customer meeting. - Send me a short list of deals to push each morning. - An hour before each customer meeting, email me what we last discussed and where the deal stands. - Post a weekly summary of won and lost deals to our sales channel in Slack. Every account has agents. ## Who can create agents Admins can always create and change agents. Managers and users can when an admin has allowed their role: 1. Go to **Settings → Account → Settings** ([https://app.garba.ai/setup/account-settings](https://app.garba.ai/setup/account-settings)). 2. Under **AI Tools → Who can create agents**, add **Managers**, **Users** or both. **Admins** are always in the list. 3. Click **Save**. ![The Who can create agents setting under AI Tools in the account settings](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/Dsh3LsizNIPXof8VVL2eLfkRxJfnAeMopbwA0isKu8FLG4UKJ1916xysidOAo7ujwfz133ALIy7.png) 1. **Settings** under **Account** in the settings menu. 2. **Who can create agents**: add the roles that may create agents. In a new account, only admins can create agents until an admin changes this. If your role is not allowed, **Create agent** and **Use template** are greyed out, and a note at the top of the **Agent library** says why. You can still use agents that others have set up for you. If an admin later takes a role away, or changes someone's role to one that is not allowed, the agents that person owns are paused straight away, and they get an alert. Once the role is allowed again, the owner or an admin turns each agent back on with **Resume**. ## Creating an agent Agents live under **Automate → Agents** in the left menu ([https://app.garba.ai/automate/agents/library](https://app.garba.ai/automate/agents/library)). The page opens on the **Agent library**, a set of ready-made agents grouped under **Sales**, **Sales leadership**, **Customer success**, **Product & marketing** and **Leadership**. There are two ways to start: - **From a template.** Find one that fits, such as **Post-meeting email draft**, **Daily deal push** or **Custom pre-meeting brief**, and click **Use template**. **Details** shows what it does first. Garba makes a copy for you and asks the choices the template leaves to you, such as when it should run and which Slack channel the result should go to. - **From scratch.** Click **Create agent** and describe what you want: what the agent should do, when it should run, and where the result should go. Garba writes the instructions, picks the tools it needs and opens the agent beside the chat. ![The Agent library with its ready-made templates](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/wKoRStbpm0OLClRqKTE76cuYpnwQ6RB7qx8tSzUWSbcSKbQmQzNzlywEvEDxB5m97vU2gDUuVtc.png) 1. **Create agent**: describe your own agent from scratch. 2. **Use template**: start from a ready-made agent. 3. **Details**: see what a template does before you use it. You can also just ask Ask Garba, for example _"Create an agent that emails me a summary of my open deals every Friday at 4pm"_. A new agent starts as a **Draft**. Nothing runs until you turn it on. When Garba has nothing left to ask, it offers **Turn it on**, or **Keep it as a draft** to check it first. ## Checking and turning it on Click an agent on **Manage agents** ([https://app.garba.ai/automate/agents/manage](https://app.garba.ai/automate/agents/manage)) to open its panel. The **Overview** tab shows: - **When it should run**: its triggers (see below). - **Assigned to**: who it runs for. - **What it will do**: the instructions. Type straight into them to make a change. - **Tools and access**: what the agent is allowed to use, such as your mailbox, Slack, Microsoft Teams or another tool you have connected to Garba. Click **Save** to keep your changes. You can also ask Garba in the chat beside the panel to change the agent for you. When you are happy with it, click **Publish**. If something the agent needs is not set up yet, such as Slack not being connected or your mailbox missing, Garba lists what to fix and the agent stays a draft. Tip: click **Run now** first to try it out. It runs as you, on your real data, and anything the agent has to ask about first still waits for your approval (see below). An agent that starts after a meeting cannot be run by hand (see below). ![A new agent made from a template, with Garba's setup questions beside its panel](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/vQRIrCctrTJE4m382lzU1k56fXST8l8mTAiq7cNN8Cg5TIuLSl3dHEuH2XKcI2i3ul7aNDbcxZK.png) 1. Garba's questions about the choices the template leaves to you. Click an answer, type your own, or **Skip**. 2. The agent is a **Draft** until you publish it. 3. **Run now**: try the agent once, as you. 4. **Publish**: turn the agent on. ## When an agent runs Under **When it should run**, pick **On demand**, **On a schedule**, or one of the events below: - **On demand**: only when someone clicks **Run now**. - **On a schedule**: **Daily**, **Weekly**, **Monthly** or **Yearly**, at a time you choose. The time is in your own time zone, set under **Settings → User → Settings**. Each schedule runs at most once a day. **Daily** means Monday to Friday unless you add the weekend. - **An event**, when something happens in Garba or your CRM:

Event

When it runs

After a meeting

A recorded meeting is over and its summary and any scorecards are ready.

Before a meeting

A set time before each upcoming meeting in your calendar, from 15 minutes to 24 hours before it starts.

Meeting logged in CRM

The meeting has been logged in your CRM.

New deal

A new deal is created in your CRM.

Deal status changed

A deal moves between open, won and lost.

Deal stage changed

A deal moves to another stage of its pipeline in your CRM.

Deal score updated

Garba scores a deal again after a new meeting, email or note.

Email sent or received

An email with someone outside your company is sent or received in a connected mailbox.

An event trigger also has **Whose**: **Mine**, **My team's** or **Everyone in the account**. On an agent that runs for other people, it is always each person's own. A meeting event also has **Which meetings**: **All meetings**, **Meetings with customers and prospects** or **Internal meetings**. You can add more than one trigger with **Add another trigger**, for example a weekly schedule as well as **After a meeting**. ![The Before a meeting trigger and its settings](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/OHN3ZqMLRZb0ke7W3RDqV9eJhUi48C3AYEBCoqk1ragiAJiPMHerUVyDXhkQNMdKC8mztHZi9bw.png) 1. The event that starts the agent, here **Before a meeting**. 2. **Whose** meetings it runs for. 3. **How long before it starts**. 4. **Which meetings**. 5. **Add another trigger**. A few things to know: - **Before a meeting** has **How long before it starts**. Private meetings never start an agent. With **Mine**, it runs for meetings you are on and have not declined. If a meeting is cancelled or made private before the agent runs, it does not run. If the meeting moves, it runs before the new time instead. The **Custom pre-meeting brief** template is a good place to start. - **Deal stage changed** can be narrowed to one stage, such as _"when a deal reaches Proposal, draft a proposal email"_. Ask Garba to set this up: it offers the stages and pipelines from your own CRM. Renaming the stage in your CRM later does not break it. - Apart from **Before a meeting**, events only start an agent for things that happened in the last six hours. Connecting your CRM or mailbox does not run your agents on everything from before. - An agent that starts after a meeting, or when one is logged in your CRM, cannot be run by hand, because there is no meeting to run it on. **Before a meeting** is the exception. ## Who an agent runs for An agent runs for you unless you give it to others under **Assigned to**: - **Just you** - **Everyone in the account**, apart from you - **Teams and people**, to pick teams or named colleagues. A team does not include you: to get the agent yourself as well, also pick yourself by name. ![The Assigned to section of an agent's panel](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/YMn6nBhq4ltKl8bgjk7767zglsVhm5zDl6F9LHnyLJJOh38lfSLzon6Q8xgegi6mi7H85ldziZb.png) 1. **Just you**. 2. **Everyone in the account**, apart from you. 3. **Teams and people**. Who an agent can reach depends on its owner's role. An admin's agent can run for anyone in the account, a manager's for their own team, and anyone else's only for its owner. An admin changing someone else's agent can only pick from the people its owner can reach. Each person gets their own runs, built from their own meetings, deals, mailbox and connections, as if they had set it up themselves. A manager can set up one daily report and every seller on the team gets their own. Nobody, not even the owner, can open someone else's runs. People an agent is assigned to see it marked **Assigned to you**. They can read it, run it by hand and decide their own approvals, but only the owner or an admin can change, pause or delete it. Apart from the owner, only people with a recording licence get an agent assigned to them. A schedule runs in each person's own time zone. ## What an agent may do without asking Reading never needs approval. By default: - **Runs without asking:** posting in your account's Slack or Teams channels, sending emails from Garba to people in your company, creating artifacts, saving email drafts, creating share links to a meeting or an artifact, and creating and applying tags. - **Asks you first:** sending email from your own mailbox, deleting a tag, and anything that would create or change something in another tool you have connected to Garba. When an agent needs your approval, it stops and shows exactly what it wants to do, for example the email with its recipients, subject and text. You get a notification in the bell, and a message in Slack or Teams (or an email if neither is connected) with a link straight to it. On the approval you can: - **Approve**: do it exactly as written. - **Always allow this**: approve it and stop asking about that tool in your own runs of this agent. - **Reject**: with a note if you like. The note tells the agent why, so it is worth writing. When several things are waiting, **Review and approve all** goes through them one after another. An approval that nobody answers expires after seven days. Only the person a run was for can approve it: an admin or the agent's owner cannot approve on your behalf. To change what an agent may do without asking, open **Tools and access** in its panel and set a tool to **Always allow**, **Ask** or **Disabled**. This covers your own runs of the agent: each person it runs for decides for their own runs. If you want to see every Slack post before it goes out, set that tool to **Ask**. ## Seeing what an agent did The **Activity** tab in an agent's panel lists its recent runs, how each one went and a short summary. Click one of your own runs to see its report and **What it did**: each email, post or change it made, or asked to make. A run shows as: - **Done**, **Nothing to do** or **Failed** - **Waiting for you** while something needs your approval - **Skipped**, with the reason, when it did not start You also find every run under **Agent runs** in the **History** pane of [Ask Garba](https://help.garba.ai/en/articles/10741311.md), where you can ask follow-up questions about it. ## AI credits Every agent run uses AI credits, and the agents list shows what a run of each agent costs on average. When your account has used all of its credits for the month: - Agents do not run until the credits reset. Each run that should have started shows as **Skipped: no credits**, and the agent starts again by itself once there are credits. You don't need to resume it. - A run already going when the credits run out stops, keeps what it did so far, and shows as **Stopped: no credits**. A single run that reaches its own spending limit stops the same way, even when the account still has credits. - The first time this happens in a month, each person an agent runs for automatically gets an alert. A run you start with **Run now** sends no alert, because you see the result. - Skipped runs never count towards the failed runs that make Garba pause an agent. How many credits you have, when they reset and what else uses them: [AI Credits in Garba](https://help.garba.ai/en/articles/10742528.md). ## Pausing an agent To stop an agent for a while, click **Pause** on its row in **Manage agents**, or in the **More actions** menu (⋮) at the top of its panel. Click **Resume** to turn it back on. Only its owner or an admin can pause, resume or delete it. ![Manage agents, with a paused agent](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/ghelpcenter/eec1cYtdykTm0ihYlLQYwfob1jsHwfOpT8IwtmNitjoJ99w4AGLizOgNY6Vc5LtNNFIfTjeDZ7g.png) 1. A paused agent shows **Paused**. 2. **Resume** turns it back on. On an active agent, the same button pauses it. 3. **Delete**. Garba also pauses an agent by itself, says why at the top of its panel and tells its owner, when: - **Its last three automatic runs failed.** For an agent that runs for several people, this has to be true for everyone it ran for. Fix the cause, then click **Resume**. To find out what went wrong, ask Garba about the agent: it names the runs that failed and why. - **It ran on its own 100 times in 24 hours for one person.** That usually means a trigger keeps firing, for example a deal that keeps moving back and forth between two stages. Check the trigger, then click **Resume**. - **The owner's role is no longer allowed to create agents.** Once an admin allows the role again, click **Resume**. An agent also runs on its own at most 30 times an hour for each person it runs for. A run past that is **Skipped**. Runs you start with **Run now** never count towards these limits. ## When something is not set up If an agent needs something that is not connected, such as Slack for the account or your own mailbox, it still runs without that tool and Garba sends an **Agent problems** alert, in the notifications bell and as a Slack or Teams message or an email. Problems with the account's own connections go to the account's admins. Problems with your own mailbox or connections go to you. You hear about each problem once, not on every run. Read more in [Notifications and alerts in Garba](https://help.garba.ai/en/articles/10742524.md). ## Good to know - An agent always acts as the person it runs for: with their access, their data and their connections. - Changes to an agent apply from its next run. A run already going finishes as it started. - Changing an agent's instructions, triggers or tools, or pausing or deleting it, cancels any approvals it still had waiting. - If the owner of an agent is removed from Garba, their agents are deleted, also for the people they ran for. Contact Garba support to restore one under a new owner. - Every message an agent posts in Slack or Teams, or sends from Garba's own address, ends with a line naming the agent and who set it up, with a link to it.