In today's on-demand digital economy, speed isn't just a feature—it's a fundamental expectation. Customers expect instant confirmations, immediate access to services, and real-time updates. Yet, many businesses still rely on processes that run on a schedule—once an hour, or once a night. This delay, born from the era of batch processing, creates a gap between an event happening and your business reacting to it.
What if you could close that gap? What if you could Automate at the Speed of Your Business? The answer lies in shifting from a schedule-based mindset to one driven by events. Welcome to the world of event-driven automation, where your workflows activate the very instant something important happens.
Event-Driven Automation is a paradigm where workflows are initiated in direct response to an event—a notification that something significant has occurred.
Think of it like this:
An event trigger is that notification. It’s a predefined condition that listens for specific real-time events—like a new user signing up, a payment being processed, or a support ticket being created—and automatically kicks off the correct business process.
At its core, every effective trigger is composed of three key elements. It doesn't just ask "What happened?" but also "Is this important?" and "What should we do?"
The Event: This is the signal itself. It’s the raw data indicating that something occurred. Events can come from anywhere: a webhook from Stripe for a payment.succeeded, a message in a Kafka topic, a new row in a database, or a custom event from your own application's API Triggers.
The Filter: Not every event requires action. A filter lets you define the precise conditions under which a workflow should run. You can inspect the data inside the event payload to ensure you only react to what matters. For example, you might only care about orders over a certain value or user sign-ups from a specific region.
The Action: This is the "what's next." Once an event occurs and passes the filter, the action initiates a specific workflow. This could be anything from calling an API, sending a Slack notification, adding a user to an email sequence, or starting a complex, multi-step Business Process Automation.
Adopting an event-driven model isn't just a technical upgrade; it's a strategic advantage that delivers tangible business benefits.
This is where Triggers.do comes in. We provide a powerful, developer-first platform to connect your business events to actionable logic, instantly. You can initiate any workflow, from any system, at any time.
Our declarative, code-first approach makes defining sophisticated triggers simple and transparent.
Consider this example, where we want to start a special fulfillment process for high-value orders:
import { Trigger } from 'triggers.do';
// A trigger that starts the 'HighValueOrderFulfillment' workflow
// whenever a new order over $500 is placed.
const highValueOrderTrigger = new Trigger({
event: 'platform.order.created',
filter: 'data.totalAmount > 500',
action: {
workflow: 'HighValueOrderFulfillment',
inputs: {
orderId: '{{data.id}}',
customerEmail: '{{data.customer.email}}'
}
}
});
await highValueOrderTrigger.activate();
Let's break this down:
With just a few lines of code, you've created a robust, real-time automation that directly impacts your business operations.
Q: What is an event trigger?
A: An event trigger is a predefined condition that, when met, automatically initiates a workflow. It acts as the starting point for automation, reacting to events like a new user signing up, a payment being processed, or a support ticket being created.
Q: What kind of event sources can I connect to Triggers.do?
A: You can connect virtually any event source, including webhooks from SaaS platforms (like Stripe or Shopify), messages from pub/sub systems (like Kafka or RabbitMQ), database changes, or custom events sent directly from your own applications via our API.
Q: How do I filter which events start a workflow?
A: Triggers.do provides a powerful filtering engine. You can define specific conditions based on the event payload data, such as amount > 100 or status === 'completed', ensuring that workflows only run for the exact events you care about.
Q: Can a single event trigger multiple workflows?
A: Yes. While a single trigger definition typically maps to one workflow, you can create multiple triggers that listen for the same event but have different filters and actions. This allows for sophisticated, branching logic right at the point of event ingestion.
The shift to event-driven automation is the key to building a modern, responsive, and efficient business. By connecting real-time events to immediate action, you unlock new levels of operational excellence and create superior customer experiences.
Ready to close the gap between event and action?
Visit Triggers.do today and activate your first event-triggered workflow.