Trigger functionality

A trigger is generally what causes an automation to process data. Triggers generally emit new or modified data rows that are to be processed by the automation's actions.

For example, a CRM polling trigger "new or updated contact" will emit new or modified contacts since the last time the trigger was executed.

There are different varieties of triggers:

Instant triggers fire whenever another system pushes data to the APIANT system via webhooks. Instant triggers have "(instant)" appended at the end of their names.

For example, a CRM "new or updated contact (instant)" trigger will fire every time a contact is added or modified in the CRM system. The CRM system will send a webhook to the APIANT system containing information about the contact that was added or modified. The automation will then be immediately queued for execution to process that contact.

Polling triggers are periodically executed by the system on a defined schedule, generally every 15 minutes. Upon each polling cycle, the system executes the trigger. The trigger then fetches data and compares it against previously processed data identifiers stored in APIANT's database. Depending on the type of trigger, new items and/or modified items are then emitted as determined by comparing what is in APIANT's database.

Date Time triggers provide another way to control the scheduling of the automation's polling trigger(s).

A Date Time trigger can be combined with one or more other polling triggers:

The Date Time app provides various types of scheduling options:

Two-way sync triggers provide functionality to bidirectionally sync data between two systems. They are paired with two-way sync actions.

For example, this is a minimal automation to two-way sync client records:

Regardless of the type of trigger, it may emit one or more data rows. A data row is a collection of information. For example, a CRM "new person" trigger would emit a data row containing information about that person like their name, email, phone, etc.

The system will execute the automation's actions for each emitted trigger data row.