Automatic Ordering: Keep Any Area Monitored Without the Manual Work

TL;DR: Keep any area under continuous coverage without checking the archive yourself. When you save an area, enable Watch AOI to get notified as new imagery matches your filters, and turn on Automatic Ordering to have qualifying satellite imagery bought and delivered for you. Every new image that enters the archive over your area is checked against your criteria, and the ones that qualify are ordered automatically. You stop losing hours to manual checks. You stop missing captures. Your spend stays inside limits you control. Live now for SkyFi Pro customers.

If you monitor a place over time, you already know the routine. Log in. Search the archive. Scan for anything new over your site. Find nothing. Come back tomorrow and do it again. Then the one day you forget is the day the image you needed lands, and you find out a week later.

Today that loop is gone. Automatic Ordering is live on the SkyFi platform, and it turns satellite imagery monitoring from a daily task into a standing capability. Your coverage stays current whether or not anyone remembers to look.

What's new: satellite imagery that orders itself

When you save an area of interest, you now get two options that work on your filter selections. Watch AOI notifies you by email as new archive imagery matches your criteria. Automatic Ordering goes a step further and buys the qualifying imagery for you, so your team spends its time on analysis instead of acquisition. You can enable either one or both.

You define the area, the criteria, and the budget once. From that point, any new image that enters the archive over your area is evaluated against your filters, and qualifying imagery is purchased and delivered without you returning to the app.

In plain terms: you tell SkyFi what good coverage looks like and what you are willing to spend, and the coverage arrives on its own. The current picture is always there when you need it.

The manual workflow Automatic Ordering replaces

Keeping eyes on an area used to look like this:

• Log in and search the archive over your site.

• Check whether any new imagery has landed since yesterday.

• Review it, order it by hand, and wait for delivery.

• Repeat, every day, for every area you monitor.

That is not a one-time task. It is a recurring cost for every analyst, on every area, indefinitely, and it has a failure mode built in: the imagery you need can enter the archive on a day no one checked, and a manual process only catches it if someone happens to be looking. Across a monitoring program covering multiple sites, that is real hours lost and real coverage missed.

Automatic Ordering removes the step entirely, which means the labor goes away and the gaps close at the same time.

How it works: configure once, coverage keeps arriving

The advantage over buying scene by scene is the model. You do not order per image, so you do not have to track each image. You set your criteria once, and the platform orders for you from then on.

When new satellite imagery is delivered over your area, it appears in your library automatically, with no re-ordering. Your coverage stays current on its own, so the next time you open the platform the latest available imagery is already loaded.

Get started in under a minute

• Draw or open an area of interest and save it.

• In the Save AOI dialog, check

  • Watch AOI

  • Automatic Ordering

  • or both

• Set your imagery filters: resolution, cloud cover, sensor type, and the minimum percentage of your area an image must cover to qualify.

• For Automatic Ordering, choose the purchase period (start and end dates), the budget and how often it refreshes, the acquisition priority, a payment method, and a maximum price per image. Then click Activate.

That is the last action required. From there, ordering runs inside the limits you set, and you only hear from it when something needs your attention.

Why control is the point

Automation is only an advantage if you trust it not to surprise you, so the guardrails are what make hands-off ordering safe to turn on.

Your budget is a hard cap per period. Nothing is ordered above your maximum price per image. You can cap how many images it buys, and you set a start and end date so ordering runs only as long as you intend. If your budget runs out or a payment fails, ordering pauses and does not silently resume: you get an alert with a link to the image and you decide what happens next. You can pause or stop Automatic Ordering yourself at any time.

Every order, automatic or manual, is recorded in your order history with the image, the price, and the area it came from. That gives you a complete, defensible record of spend, which is a hard requirement for enterprise and government teams and a useful one for everybody else.

Who automatic ordering is for

It is built for teams that need a place watched over time without anyone managing the buying. The payoff is clearest for:

• Construction and infrastructure:

  keep a current view of site progress and asset condition without sending someone to pull imagery each week.

• Agriculture:

  follow a full season across fields automatically, capturing change as it happens rather than after the fact.

• Insurance:

  build a dated, ordered record of a property or region before and after an event, with nothing missed in between.

• Energy and environmental monitoring:

  hold coverage current over sites, corridors, and remote areas at scale, with no growth in analyst workload.

The same model supports defense and intelligence teams running persistent surveillance over fixed areas, with the spend controls and order-level audit trail that procurement requires.

What you get

• Continuous coverage of your area with no manual checks: new archive imagery is ordered as it enters the archive.

• Less wasted spend: filters on resolution, cloud cover, sensor type, and minimum area coverage skip low-value passes before they cost anything.

• Predictable cost: budget per period, maximum price per satellite image, and a purchase limit keep spend inside hard bounds.

• Full control: pause and stop on demand, no silent resume, and alerts the moment ordering pauses.

• A complete audit trail: every purchase, automatic or manual, recorded in your order history.

Availability

Automatic Ordering is live now and included for SkyFi Pro customers. Any account can enable a single Watch AOI to try monitoring with email notifications, but Automatic Ordering itself requires a Pro account. This first release covers archive imagery, the new coverage that enters the archive over your area. More is coming.

Frequently asked questions

What is Automatic Ordering? Automatic Ordering lets you put a Watch AOI on an area and have SkyFi buy qualifying imagery for you. When new imagery enters the archive over your area, it is checked against your filters, and the images that match are ordered and delivered automatically, within the budget and limits you set.

How do I set it up? Save an area of interest, check Watch AOI and Automatic Ordering in the Save AOI dialog, and set your imagery filters. For Automatic Ordering, set the purchase period, budget, minimum AOI overlap, acquisition priority, payment method, and a maximum price per image, then click Activate.

What imagery does it cover? This first release covers archive imagery: new coverage that enters the archive over your area. It does not place new satellite tasking orders.

How is spend controlled? You set a budget per period, a maximum price per image, and an optional cap on the number of purchases. Nothing is ordered outside those limits. If the budget runs out, ordering pauses and does not resume on its own.

What happens when my budget runs out or a payment fails? Ordering pauses and you receive an alert with a link to the matched image. The Watch AOI keeps evaluating new imagery so you can still buy by hand, and you re-enable Automatic Ordering when you are ready. It never resumes spending on its own.

Is Automatic Ordering available on the free tier? No. Automatic Ordering requires SkyFi Pro. Any account can enable a single Watch AOI and receive email notifications of matching imagery, then purchase manually.

Can I pause or stop Automatic Ordering? Yes, at any time. Your configuration is preserved when you pause. Every order is kept in your order history regardless.