Modern applications are complex, distributed systems. The days of monolithic codebases are fading as we embrace microservices, serverless functions, and third-party APIs. But this new paradigm presents a challenge: how do you get all these disparate services to communicate effectively without creating a tangled mess of dependencies?
The answer is Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).
EDA is a powerful model where decoupled services communicate asynchronously through events. An "event" is simply a record of something that happened—a new order was created, a user signed up, a payment failed. Instead of services calling each other directly, they produce and listen for events, allowing them to react and perform tasks without being tightly coupled.
This approach builds resilient, scalable, and adaptable systems. At Triggers.do, we believe this is the future of business process automation. With our developer-friendly platform, you can implement sophisticated event-driven patterns with declarative, easy-to-read code.
Let's explore five essential patterns you can build today with Triggers.do.
This is one of the most fundamental and powerful patterns in EDA. A single event is published and then "fanned out" to multiple independent listeners, each kicking off its own distinct process.
What it solves: It completely decouples the event producer from the consumers. The service that creates an order doesn't need to know or care about sending a confirmation email, updating inventory, notifying the shipping department, or adding the customer to a marketing campaign. It just needs to announce: order.created.
How to implement with Triggers.do: You can define multiple triggers that listen for the exact same event. Each trigger can have its own filter and handler, initiating a different workflow.
Example Use Case: A new user signs up.
// This one event can be used by multiple, separate triggers.
const newUserEvent = 'user.created';
// Trigger for the Welcome Email Workflow
const welcomeEmailTrigger = new Trigger({
name: 'Send Welcome Email',
event: newUserEvent,
source: 'auth-service',
handler: async (event) => ({
workflow: 'send-welcome-email',
input: event.data.user
})
});
// Trigger for the CRM Workflow
const crmSyncTrigger = new Trigger({
name: 'Sync New User to CRM',
event: newUserEvent,
source: 'auth-service',
handler: async (event) => ({
workflow: 'crm-user-sync',
input: { email: event.data.user.email, name: event.data.user.name }
})
});
Not every event is equally important. Sometimes, you only want to act on events that meet very specific criteria. This is where event filtering comes in. It ensures that workflows are only initiated when the conditions are just right, saving computational resources and preventing unwanted actions.
What it solves: It prevents your system from being overwhelmed by noisy event streams. You can isolate high-priority events from routine ones, creating precise business process automation.
How to implement with Triggers.do: Our platform has powerful filtering built into the core of every trigger. You can define simple or complex rules based on the event's payload data, ensuring your workflow only runs when the exact conditions you specify are met.
Example Use Case: A new order is placed via Stripe.
// This trigger will only fire for high-value orders.
const newHighValueOrderTrigger = new Trigger({
name: 'New High-Value Order',
description: 'Triggers a fulfillment workflow for new orders over $100.',
event: 'order.created',
source: 'stripe-webhook',
filter: {
// The magic happens here!
condition: 'event.data.amount > 100',
priority: 'high'
},
handler: async (event) => {
// Initiate the 'priority-order-processing' workflow
return {
workflow: 'priority-order-processing',
input: event.data
};
}
});
Sagas manage long-running, distributed transactions that span multiple services. Imagine booking a trip: you need to book a flight, reserve a hotel, and rent a car. If any one of those steps fails, you need to undo the previous steps (e.g., cancel the flight and hotel if the car rental fails).
What it solves: It ensures data consistency across microservices without using traditional, locking database transactions. The saga coordinates this complex dance using a sequence of events.
How to implement with Triggers.do: You can choreograph a saga by creating triggers that listen for the success or failure events of each step in the process. Each trigger is responsible for initiating the next step or a compensating action to roll back the transaction.
Example Use Case: An e-commerce order process.
This creates a resilient, self-correcting business process.
This isn't just one pattern, but a fundamental choice in EDA.
What it solves: It clarifies control flow. While pure choreography can be very flexible, it can become hard to track the overall state of a business process. An orchestrator provides a single source of truth.
How to implement with Triggers.do: Triggers.do is a powerful orchestrator that responds to choreographed events. It doesn't just receive a webhook; it provides a complete orchestration platform. It centralizes the "Business-as-Code" logic for what should happen when an event occurs, providing robust filtering, conditional logic, and direct integration with your agentic workflows. This gives you the best of both worlds: decoupled event producers and centralized, observable workflow logic.
What happens when an event can't be processed? Perhaps a downstream service is temporarily unavailable, or the event data is malformed. If you simply discard the event, you risk losing critical data and breaking a business process. A DLQ is a safety net.
What it solves: It provides resilience and prevents data loss. Failed events are sent to a special "dead-letter" queue for later inspection and reprocessing.
How to implement with Triggers.do: Robust platforms like Triggers.do have this concept built-in. With built-in retry mechanisms and detailed logging, you have a strong first line of defense. Furthermore, you can use the platform itself to implement a DLQ pattern. A trigger handling a critical event can have a try/catch block. On failure, it can fire another event, like event.processing.failed, which is then picked up by a separate trigger that sends a notification to developers or logs the failed payload for manual review.
Implementing these patterns from scratch can be complex. You need to manage message brokers, write consumer logic, build filtering systems, and create observability tools.
Triggers.do abstracts all that complexity away. Our platform provides the powerful core you need to build sophisticated, event-driven systems with ease. By defining simple triggers, you can:
Ready to move beyond simple webhooks and build truly scalable, event-driven workflows?
Explore Triggers.do to start turning your events into automated business processes today.