How do Plays run, and what controls their order?

The order Plays run in depends on how the Play is triggered, plus a handful of sequence-level enrollment rules that determine whether each contact actually makes it into a sequence.

How Plays fire

A Play's firing behavior is determined by its trigger. Different trigger types fire differently:

• Continuous triggers — Audience, Web Intent, LinkedIn engagement (likes, comments, follows, profile views), New Hire signals. These fire whenever a new match appears. The system evaluates on a ~15-minute polling cycle.

• One-shot triggers — Manual. Fires only when you invoke it from the Audience view.

• Scheduled triggers — Schedule. Fires on a cadence you configure.

• External triggers — Webhook, Zapier. Fires when an outside system calls them.

Two things to know about continuous triggers:

• Audiences are dynamic. A contact who matched yesterday may not match today as their CRM data changes.

• The Play does not automatically re-evaluate contacts it has already processed. Editing a Play and republishing affects new matches only.

Retrigger interval — for periodic re-evaluation

Any Play can have an optional retrigger interval that re-evaluates the audience on a cadence. Configure it in the Play's settings (gear icon → re-run settings). Minimum cadence: 1 day.

This is what you'd use when you want a Play to periodically re-check whether new matches have appeared (e.g., re-run weekly against your ICP audience to pick up any new accounts).

Why a contact might not be enrolled even though they qualify

A contact can pass the audience criteria and still not end up in the sequence. The most common reasons:

• Default re-enrollment is "never." By default, a contact who has been enrolled in any sequence cannot be enrolled in another one. To allow re-enrollment, go to Settings → Features → Sequences → Rulesets and configure "Allow enrollment into multiple Sequences" and/or "Allow re-enrollment into the same sequence."

• Already in another sequence. Contacts cannot be in two sequences simultaneously, regardless of ruleset settings. They must complete or be unenrolled first.

• Exclusions. Org-level, ruleset-level, or audience-level exclusions can block enrollment. Check the contact's Exclusions tab to see which rule fired.

• No routing target. The contact's persona has no matching route in the Sequence Enrollment node. Add a route for that persona, or an "Everyone else" catch-all.

• Opted out. Contacts on the suppression list are excluded.

• Mailbox or company cap. If the daily mailbox limit or per-company enrollment cap is hit, the contact sits in Queued until capacity frees up.

• CRM sync timing race. CRM sync runs every ~15 minutes and Plays evaluate every ~15 minutes. If a CRM field changes right before a Play fires (e.g., an opportunity is created on a company), the exclusion data may not be in Unify yet. To mitigate, add a 5–15 minute delay node at the start of time-sensitive Plays.

Diagnosing enrollment failures

For per-contact diagnosis:

1. Open the Play → Metrics tab → click the Sequence node (or the "Not Enrolled" count).

1. See the breakdown of why each contact wasn't enrolled.

1. For a specific contact, open their record and check the Exclusions and Activity tabs.

For aggregate analysis:

• The Execution Logs tab in the Play Builder shows detailed enrollment attempts.

• The Play's Metrics tab shows "Not Enrolled" counts grouped by reason.

Timing notes

A few cadences are worth knowing:

• CRM sync: ~15 minutes (Salesforce and HubSpot).

• Play trigger evaluation: ~15 minutes.

• Exclusion change propagation: 30–45 minutes.

• Enrollment counters: can lag 30–60 minutes during eligibility checks. Let the system finish before re-investigating.

If you've made a settings change and re-run a Play immediately, give the system 30+ minutes before assuming the change didn't take effect.