In the world of business process automation, everything starts with a spark—an event. A new user signs up, a payment is processed, an item's inventory drops below a threshold. These events are the lifeblood of a dynamic business. But how you capture and act on them determines whether you have an efficient, automated system or a chaotic, noisy one. The key lies in defining effective workflow triggers.
A workflow trigger is more than just a simple "if this, then that." It's a precise, well-defined rule that listens for a specific event, validates its context, and initiates the correct business workflow. Getting this right prevents wasted resources, ensures accuracy, and unlocks the true power of event-driven automation.
At Triggers.do, we believe that the principle of LISTEN. FILTER. EXECUTE. is fundamental to building robust automation. Let's dive into the best practices for defining workflow triggers that are specific, resilient, and maintainable.
The most common mistake in setting up automation is creating triggers that are too broad. A generic trigger like on "order.created" might seem simple, but it will fire for every single order—test orders, fraudulent orders, low-value orders, and high-value orders alike. This creates unnecessary noise and can trigger expensive workflows when they aren't needed.
Best Practice: Use powerful filtering to ensure your trigger only fires under the exact conditions you care about. Your trigger shouldn't just listen for an event; it should interrogate the event's payload.
Instead of a generic trigger, define one that reacts to a specific business scenario. For example, a trigger for high-value orders that require special attention:
import { Trigger } from 'triggers.do';
const newOrderTrigger = new Trigger({
name: 'New High-Value Order',
description: 'Triggers a fulfillment workflow for new orders over $100.',
event: 'order.created',
source: 'stripe-webhook',
filter: {
// This filter is the key to an effective trigger
condition: 'event.data.amount > 100 && event.data.shipping.country == "US"',
priority: 'high'
},
handler: async (event) => {
// Now, we only initiate the workflow for qualified events
console.log(`Starting high-value workflow for order: ${event.data.orderId}`);
return {
workflow: 'special-order-processing',
input: event.data
};
}
});
By adding a filter, you transform a noisy signal into a meaningful business instruction. This is the core of effective workflow triggers.
A trigger has one primary job: to decide if and when a workflow should start. It should not perform the business logic itself. This separation of concerns is a cornerstone of scalable and maintainable system design.
Best Practice: The trigger's handler should be lightweight. Its main responsibility is to pass the necessary data to the correct workflow. Notice in the code example above, the handler's only job is to return the name of the workflow and the input it needs. The heavy lifting is left to the special-order-processing workflow.
This approach, which we call Business-as-Code, makes your system:
Not all events are created equal. The source of your event—be it an external service or an internal system—should inform how you design your trigger. Triggers.do can listen to a wide array of sources for API triggers and more.
Best Practice: Match the trigger type to the event source for maximum reliability.
As your system grows, you might have dozens or even hundreds of triggers. trigger-1 or new-trigger won't be helpful in six months.
Best Practice: Treat your trigger definitions like you treat your code. Give them clear, descriptive names and detailed descriptions.
// BAD
const t1 = new Trigger({
name: 'stripe trigger',
event: 'charge.succeeded',
// ...
});
// GOOD
const chargeSucceededTrigger = new Trigger({
name: 'Process Successful Payment',
description: 'When a Stripe charge succeeds, this trigger initiates the customer onboarding and receipting workflow.',
event: 'charge.succeeded',
source: 'stripe-webhook',
// ...
});
This simple discipline makes your automation landscape self-documenting. A new team member can immediately understand the purpose of Process Successful Payment without having to read a line of handler code.
In distributed systems, events can sometimes be delivered more than once. A webhook provider might retry a request if it doesn't get a 200 OK response quickly enough. If your trigger isn't ready for this, you might end up processing the same $100 order twice.
Best Practice: Ensure that running your trigger with the same event data multiple times produces the same result as running it once. This is known as idempotency.
While the full workflow should be idempotent (e.g., don't charge a credit card twice), the trigger is the first line of defense. Triggers.do helps by providing a unique identifier for each incoming event. You can use this ID in your handler or workflow to check if an event has already been processed.
Following these best practices will elevate your use of event-driven automation from simple reactions to intelligent orchestration.
This is where a platform like Triggers.do shines. While you can build this logic from scratch, Triggers.do provides the complete framework to do it right from the start. It's more than just a listener for webhooks; it's an orchestration platform that provides:
Ready to define effective triggers and build powerful, event-driven workflows? Business-as-Code starts here. Explore Triggers.do today.