Project Automation

Project Automation in iContentForge allows you to set rules for automatically generating articles based on specific triggers or schedules. This hands-off approach ensures your content pipeline is continuously fed, maximizing the efficiency of your programmatic SEO strategy.

You can configure automation rules within any project's settings to define when and how articles should be generated without manual intervention.

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The Automation settings panel within a project, showing rule configuration options.

Configuring Automation Rules

Navigate to your project, then go to Settings > Automation. Here you can create and manage rules.

Trigger-Based Automation

The most common automation is triggered by adding new keywords to your project's Keyword Matrix.

Enable the "Auto-generate on new keyword" toggle.
Select a target status: Choose whether newly generated articles should be saved as Draft or marked as Ready.
(Optional) Apply a template: You can assign a specific Article Template to be used for all auto-generated content. If no template is selected, the project's default settings are used.

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This trigger is ideal for ongoing keyword research. As you or your tools discover new long-tail opportunities and add them to your matrix, articles begin generating immediately.

Schedule-Based Automation (Batch Generation)

For large-scale content creation, you can schedule batch generation.

Enable the "Schedule batch generation" toggle.
Set the frequency: Choose how often the batch job should run (e.g., Daily, Weekly, Every 2 Weeks).
Define the batch criteria: Configure the rule to generate articles for keywords that match certain filters, such as:
- Keywords with a specific priority level.
- Keywords within a designated cluster.
- Keywords that are still in the "Not Generated" status.

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Schedule-based automation is powerful for systematically working through a large keyword backlog according to your business logic (e.g., generating all "High Priority" keywords every week).

Monitoring and Managing Automation

Once enabled, you can monitor and control your automation from the same settings panel.

Activity Log: View a timestamped log of automation events, such as "Rule triggered: 5 articles generated for new keywords."
Pause Automation: Use the master "Pause All Automation" toggle at the top of the panel to temporarily halt all automatic generation for this project. This is useful for maintenance or if you need to review your strategy.
Rule-Specific Toggles: Each individual automation rule has its own enable/disable switch for granular control.

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Automation rules apply to the entire project. Ensure your Keyword Matrix and Article Templates are correctly configured before enabling automation to avoid generating unwanted content.

How Automation Works with Drip Feed

Automation and Drip Feed are complementary features that work together to create a complete, hands-off content pipeline.

Generation Phase (Automation): Your rules automatically create articles and set their status to Draft or Ready.
Publishing Phase (Drip Feed): If your Drip Feed is enabled and configured to publish articles with a status of Ready, it will automatically pick up the newly generated, ready articles and queue them for publishing to your connected CMS at the scheduled interval (approximately every 5 minutes).

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Diagram showing Automation generating articles to Ready status, and Drip Feed publishing them.

This combination allows you to define a workflow where keywords are automatically turned into finished articles, which are then automatically published at a steady, natural pace—all without daily manual effort.

Next Steps

Learn how to structure your content with Article Templates.
Set up steady publishing with Drip Feed.
Connect your content pipeline to a CMS.