Plays help Salesloft Admins guide sellers on how to respond to buyer signals.
As an admin, you can choose specific conditions—called criteria—that decide when the Play should run. These can be based on Person fields, User fields, Company fields, or even meeting details.
Things to Note: For more technical information about each field, check out our Developer Portal.
In this article, you’ll learn about the different criteria options so you can build the right rules for your team. This article includes:
When creating a Play, you’ll see three logic options inside the Criteria dropdown. These options help control how the Play behaves when conditions are added:
And/Or
The And/Or option appears next to your criteria. This option controls how multiple criteria work together.
Criteria
The +Add Criteria button allows you to define who the Play applies to. Each line you add is a separate condition that must be met. By adding criteria, you are saying that it is not only enough that the trigger is "true," but that a signal must also satisfy this additional criteria in order for the rule to fire.
Things to Note: Each item of criteria requires its own line for the rule to read and trigger properly.
Group
The +Add Group button lets you create a subgroup, which is a smaller set of conditions within the main rule. SubGroups allow you to layer criteria to build more detailed rules.
Things to Note: Creating a Subgroup is not the same as sharing Plays with user groups. These are two separate functions.
After you click the +Add Criteria button and select your criteria, you will then choose a criteria operator. Criteria operators tell Salesloft how to compare values when deciding if a Play should run.
Salesloft's current criteria operators (all case-insensitive) include the following:
- Equal – The value must be exactly what you enter.
(Example: Industry equals “Healthcare”) - Not equal – The value must be anything except what you enter.
(Example: Industry not equal to “Finance”) - Before – The value must be a date before the one you enter.
(Example: Last Contacted before 4/1/2025) - After – The value must be a date after the one you enter.
(Example: Created Date after 1/1/2024) - Before or equal – The date must be on or before the one you enter.
- After or equal – The date must be on or after the one you enter.
- Includes – The field must contain the word or phrase you enter.
(Example: Title includes “VP”) - Is null – The field must be empty or blank.
(Example: Person Email is null) - Is not null – The field must contain a value.
(Example: Person Phone is not null)
- Things to Note: A field with a ‘Blank’ value is still treated as a value. If your rule uses ‘is not null’ as the condition, it will trigger when the field is blank.
Sometimes it’s helpful to create a rule that only applies to a smaller set of accounts. That’s where SubGroups come in.
Example: You want to run a Play for open opportunities in the healthcare industry in Atlanta.
Here’s how you’d set that up:
- Add Criteria
- User - Active | equals | true (This ensures the Play only applies to open opps owned by your team.)
- Add More Criteria
- Person Company Industry | equals | healthcare
- Add Group
- Person City | equals | Atlanta
This setup targets only the accounts your team owns, in healthcare, and based in Atlanta—so your sellers can act fast.
Including date fields as the criteria for your Play allows you to trigger actions based on specific timeframes—like targeting contacts who were last engaged before a certain date or accounts created after a campaign launched.
When selecting a rule, the date-picker is empty by default with the placeholder “MM/DD/YYYY.”
Click the date-picker to open a calendar, where you can choose a specific date.
Want to learn more about creating and managing Plays? Check out the following guide for next steps.
