Some advertising tasks come back every day or week: reviewing performance, checking your automation setup, or launching the next batch of creatives. Routines let you save these tasks in Birch AI and run them on a schedule or as needed.
What can Routines do?
Review campaign performance: identify meaningful changes and opportunities, and get data-driven recommendations.
Check for creative fatigue: identify declining performance and get recommendations for creatives that may need replacing.
Review automation rules: check rules and execution logs for recurring errors, rules that no longer fire, and settings that need attention
Create ads from Google Sheets: use Stage to process eligible rows from selected sheets, with approval before every launch. For scheduled ad creation, your sheet must first be connected and configured in Stage.
How to create a Routine
1. Open Home → Routines
Either click New routine or choose a template under Start from a template.
2. Name it and add instructions
Give the Routine a recognizable Name. Use Description to explain its purpose, and Instructions to describe what it should check or do and any requirements it should follow.
For clearer results, specify the relevant accounts, timeframe, and information you want returned. If you’re using a template, review its instructions and adjust them to your needs.
3. Choose when it runs
Under Trigger, choose Manual to run the Routine on demand, or Schedule to run it regularly.
For scheduled runs, choose Hourly, Daily, Weekdays, or Weekly, then review the available time and time-zone settings. Weekly schedules also let you select a day.
Choose whether to enable Notifications, then click Create.
💡 Runs are staggered by a few minutes, so they may not start at the exact minute selected.
4. Review results and manage your Routine
The list shows each Routine’s schedule and next run. Open a Routine to review its instructions, settings, and past runs. Each run has a chat where you can review results and respond to approval requests when required.
You can also:
Use Run now to start a run without waiting for the schedule.
Pause the Routine to stop scheduled runs.
Edit its instructions or settings.
Delete it when it’s no longer needed.
Routines for ad creation from Google Sheets
Routines can use Stage to create ads from selected Google Sheets on a schedule. You prepare the launch data in your sheet, approve each sheet’s launch, and review the results afterward.
You can start from either Stage or Home → Routines. Both options use sheets that are already connected and configured in Stage.
1. Prepare your sheet in Stage
Connect and configure your sheet using Row-by-row mode, as only Row-by-row sheets can be selected for Auto-launch. 👉 See Getting started with Stage using Google Sheets for connection and mapping instructions.
Open the sheet’s Auto-launch tab and review these two settings:
Include existing rows in this sheet’s first auto-launch run
Turn this on to include the unprocessed rows already present when the sheet’s first Auto-launch run starts. If you leave it off, rows present at that moment are permanently skipped by Auto-launch, and only rows added afterward can become eligible.
❗️This choice locks when Auto-launch first starts for the sheet, regardless of which Routine triggers it. It applies across all Routines using that sheet, and adding, deleting, or replacing a Routine doesn’t unlock it.
Turn on created ads and ad sets
Choose whether newly created ads and ad sets are turned on or created paused. This setting applies to all Routines using the sheet. Changes affect future Auto-launch runs only; they don’t change the statuses of ads or ad sets created earlier.
2. Create the Routine
From Stage: in the sheet’s Auto-launch tab, click Set up routine. The Launch ads from a Google Sheet template opens with your sheet already selected.
From Home → Routines: choose Launch ads from a Google Sheet under Start from a template, then add your Stage sheets under Sources.
In the setup window:
Give the Routine a recognizable Name and review its Description and Instructions.
Under Sources, check the selected sheets and add any other configured Row-by-row sheets you want to include.
Approval mode is Manual for Routines that launch from sheets; each run requires approval before launching each sheet.
Switch Trigger to Schedule, configure when it should run, and choose whether to enable Notifications.
Click Create to save the Routine. It will appear in each selected sheet’s Auto-launch tab, even before its first run.
💡 Only sheets selected under Sources are included. Mentioning a sheet in the instructions doesn’t add it, and new sheets connected to Stage aren’t added automatically.
Auto-launch processes all eligible rows in each selected sheet, including:
New rows that haven’t created ads yet.
Rows that failed earlier without creating any ads.
Existing, unprocessed rows on the first run, if you chose to include them.
Rows that have already created ads aren’t automatically launched again, even if you edit them or create another Routine for the same sheet.
❗️You can’t select individual rows or apply filters to Routine Auto-launch. Keep rows that aren’t ready to launch in a separate sheet that isn’t included in an active Routine.
To launch specific rows, use Row range or Rows matching a filter directly in Stage.
💡You can use the same sheet in multiple Routines. They share the sheet's processing history, so a row that has already created ads won’t be automatically launched again by another Routine.
3. Approve the launch
When the Routine runs, it asks for approval before launching each sheet.
In the run chat, choose:
Allow once to approve all eligible rows in that sheet for the current run.
Deny to decline that sheet’s launch.
Each sheet needs its own approval, and every run asks again. While waiting, the sheet’s Auto-launch tab shows Awaiting approval.
Unanswered requests expire after 24 hours, and the sheet is reported as not launched.
❗️Scheduling a Routine doesn’t approve future launches. Each sheet needs approval for that run before ads are created.
4. Review launch results
You can review the results in either place:
In the Routine’s run chat: read the summary showing the sheet link, scheduled and actual run times, launch results, and platform errors for failed rows.
In Stage: open the sheet’s Auto-launch tab to see each Routine’s status, creator, next run, and latest result for that sheet.
For detailed errors, open the related Stage task, marked with a Started by routine badge. In Stage, the latest result for each sheet can have one of these statuses:
Status | What it means |
Success | Ads were created successfully. |
No eligible rows | There was nothing eligible to launch. |
Warning | Some ads weren’t created because of errors. |
Error | No ads were created because of errors. |
No runs | The Routine hasn’t run for this sheet yet. |
Open routine is available in Stage only to the Routine’s creator. If another team member created it, contact them to request changes.
What happens if a row fails?
If a row fails without creating any ads, it remains eligible for a later run. Review and fix the error, then wait for the next scheduled run or use Run now.
If some ads were created from a row but others failed, the row isn’t retried automatically. Review the task’s errors and resolve the remaining failures manually
❗️Stopping a Routine run doesn’t cancel a Stage launch that has already started. Its result appears after Stage finishes.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us via the chat bubble on the website or via email at support@bir.ch 💛