Triggers

Triggers enable you to execute your Automation based on specific criteria. You can run Automation on an ad-hoc basis, but if you want to pre-plan your executions, you can configure a particular trigger.

Context Menu Options

You can manage automation triggers from the Triggers page in Control Room, provided you have the appropriate permissions.

Permission	Description
View	View all Triggers and their details Note: you need to have View access to Buddies and Processes also
Edit	Edit Trigger details
Delete	Delete a Trigger
Enable/Disable	Enable/Disable a Trigger by clicking on this option
RunNow	This option is shown only for Email Triggers. Select this option to manually activate Email Triggers and verify for new incoming emails.
Audit	You can audit the operations on Trigger

Triggers View

You can change the display view on the Triggers page in the Control Room by selecting View from the Context Menu. The available viewing options are as follows:

View	Description
My Triggers	Displays only the triggers the currently logged-in user created. It is the default view.
All Triggers	Displays all triggers available in the system, including those created by other users.

Creating a Trigger

You can create a new Trigger from Control Room > Triggers page.

• Click on Toolbar-Menu > button
• New Trigger dialog appears.
• Fill in the required trigger information by following the instructions mentioned in Trigger Tab, Execution Tab, and Parameter Tab.

Trigger Tab

• Enter a name for the trigger for easy identification.
• Choose a Process that you want to execute
• Select the Trigger Type from the dropdown
• Fill in the trigger criteria based on the type selected: Time Trigger Criteria | Email Trigger Criteria | File System Trigger Criteria
• Optionally, specify the trigger Start Date. By default, the trigger is initiated immediately after creation.
• Optionally, specify the trigger Expiry Date. If specified, it will stop triggering new jobs after this date. By default, the trigger will never expire.

Execution Target Tab

• Select the specific Smart Buddy that should execute the process.

note

If you select the Dynamic option, any of the available Smart Buddy will pick up the job for execution

Parameters Tab

• Specify the Log Level for the job executed with this Trigger.
• To submit the necessary input parameters for a selected process, bind them according to the type of trigger chosen. You can find instructions on how to bind Email Trigger Parameters and File System Trigger Parameters by following these links: Binding Email Trigger Parameters | Binding File System Trigger Parameters.

Updating a Trigger

You can update an existing trigger to change the details. You can do this from the Triggers page

• Select a trigger to update
• Select from Context-Menu > Edit option
• Update the details
• Click on Update

Deleting a Trigger

• On the Triggers page, select the trigger you want to delete.
• Right-click to open the context menu, then click Delete.
• Confirm the prompt to permanently delete the selected trigger.

note

A user with the Administrator role can delete an existing Trigger.

Enabling/Disabling a Trigger

• On the Triggers page, select the trigger you want to enable or disable.
• Right-click to open the context menu, then choose Enable or Disable.
• The trigger's status updates accordingly.
• The selected trigger will be enabled or disabled accordingly.
• You can verify the status in the Is Enabled column; a checked box indicates that the trigger is enabled.

note

• Disabling a Trigger will block the execution of Automation.
• Turn off the Disable button to enable the trigger.

note

• When you delete a process, all associated triggers are automatically disabled. To restore functionality, users must manually reconfigure triggers upon re-adding the process.

Audit a Trigger

• On the Triggers page, select the trigger you want to audit.
• Right-click to open the Context Menu and select Audit.
• This opens the Audit Logs page, displaying a history of actions performed on the selected trigger.

Trigger Types

IntelliBuddies supports the following types of Triggers:

Trigger Type	Description
Time	Schedule a job to run at a specific time according to predetermined criteria.
Email	Invokes a job when a new email arrives on the specified email box and matches the specified criteria.
File System	Invokes a job when a specified file event(s) occur under the specified folder(s)
List	Invokes a job on data inserted/updated/deleted inside a List matches the specified criteria.

Time Trigger Criteria

You can specify your time trigger criteria by selecting the appropriate Schedule Types from the dropdown.

Schedule Types

Schedule Type	Description
Daily	Use this schedule type to trigger a job execution on one or more specified schedule(s) daily
Specific Dates	Use this schedule type to trigger a job execution on one or more specified schedule(s) on all the date(s) specified.
Weekly	Use this schedule type to trigger a job on one or more specified schedule(s) on all the selected days of the week.
Monthly	Use this schedule type to trigger a job on one or more specified schedule(s) on all the selected day(s) of the week within the specified month(s)
Recurring	Use this schedule type to trigger a job repeatedly on the specified time interval

Email Trigger Criteria

You can specify the email trigger criteria using the following fields.

Field	Description
Email Server Connection	Select a Connection from the available Email Server Connections.
Test Connection	Select this button to authenticate the credentials associated with the chosen connection.
New Connection	Click this button to create a new Email Server Connection.
Incoming Email Filter Options	Check this box to specify a Email Filter while fetching emails from the Server.
Number of Messages	Specify the count if you want to process only a specific number of emails. If not specified, all the unread emails which satisfy the filter condition will be processed.
Email Processing Order	Select the order you want to process emails. You can choose between Newest to Oldest to process the latest emails first or Oldest to Newest to process the oldest emails first.
Message Polling Interval	Specify the time interval in minutes to check emails on the Server. The limit is 10 minutes by default, but users can adjust it as needed.

note

If you select POP3 as the Email Server Connection type, please review the limitation. It is recommended to consider more efficient alternatives for improved performance.

Email Filters

Using this multiple-filter option, users can apply filter criteria to extract the required emails. The user can also build the filter expressions.

Binding Email Trigger Parameters

Email Trigger provides runtime parameters that specify the trigger event details. These details are necessary for the process to handle its tasks. You can bind these runtime parameters to the corresponding input arguments of the process. Here is the List of runtime parameters provided by Email Trigger.

Name	Type	Description
$Email_Message	System.Net.MailMessage	The email message triggered this Process. You can access details such as sender, subject, received date, body text, attachments, and any other information from this parameter.

Running Email Triggers on demand

You can run any Email Triggers on-demand to check for any new emails and to queue up the job on-demand by following the steps below:

• Select an email trigger to run
• Select from Context-Menu > Run Now option.

File System Trigger Criteria

You can specify the file system trigger criteria using the following fields.

Field	Description
Folder To Monitor	Specify the folder to monitor. You can either specify the local file system path or the network path. For example: C:\MyMonitorFolder or \\file-server\MyMonitorFolder. Ensure that the monitored folder has the appropriate permissions.
Filter	You can specify the wildcard filter based on certain file types only if you want to trigger it. For example, specifying *.pdf here would trigger only when a PDF file is either Created/Modified/Deleted/Renamed under monitored folder(s)
Include Subfolders	Check this box if you want to monitor all the nested folders under the specified Folder To Monitor
Events To Monitor	Check the required events to monitor. You have the following options: Created: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a file is created, copied, or moved inside a monitored folder(s) Modified: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a file inside a monitored folder(s) gets modified Deleted: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a file gets deleted inside a monitored folder(s) Renamed: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a file gets renamed inside a monitored folder(s)

Folder Permissions

For a file system trigger to work, the monitored folder should have at least the following three permissions for user monitoring:

• read,
• read & execute
• list folder contents.

The user here refers to an App Pool Identity User or the Windows User based on how you have deployed your Control Room Server inside IIS.    - If you configure Control Room Server to run under App Pool Identity inside IIS, the corresponding App Pool Identity account should have the appropriate permissions to the monitored folder.

note

   - You can add the corresponding App Pool Identity account by prefixing the IIS AppPool domain before the account. For example, the default App Pool Identity account is represented as IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool    - This configuration will limit the usage of file system triggers to work only with local system folders.

   - If you configure Control Room Server to run under a custom Windows User account inside IIS, the corresponding user should have the appropriate permissions to the monitored folder.

Locate the permissions by right-clicking on the trigger folder and choosing the properties. In the properties dialog, go to the Security tab. Provide the appropriate permission to the user.

tip

It is advisable to configure the Control Room Server within IIS to operate under a custom network domain account. This setup enables the file system trigger to function seamlessly across local folders and network-shared drives.

Binding File System Trigger Parameters

File System Trigger provides runtime parameters that specify the trigger event details. These details are necessary for the process to handle its tasks. You can bind these runtime parameters to the process's corresponding input arguments.

Here is the List of runtime parameters provided by File System Trigger.

Name	Type	Description
$File_EventType	System.IO.WatcherChangeTypes	Specifies the type of file event that triggered this process execution. It can be one of the following values Created(1): The file was created Changed(4): The file was modified Deleted(2): The file was deleted Renamed(8): The file was renamed
$File_Name	System.String	Specifies the Name of the file along with the file extension
$File_Path	System.String	Specifies the full path, including the folder and file name with extension
$File_FolderPath	System.String	Specifies the folder path where the file resides
$File_Extension	System.String	Specifies the extension of the file
$File_Length	System.Double	Specifies the size of the file
$File_CreationTime	System.DateTime	Specifies the created date and Time of the file
$File_LastWriteTime	System.DateTime	Specifies the modified date and Time of the file
$File_LastAccessTime	System.DateTime	Specifies the last accessed date and Time of the file
$File_IsReadOnly	System.Boolean	Specifies whether the file is read-only or not. A value of true indicates the file is read-only.

note

$File_CreationTime, $File_LastWriteTime, and $File_LastAccessTime store their DateTime values in UTC Standard format.

tip

Converting from UTC: To convert UTC to a specified Timezone, use the TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc static method.

tip

Converting to UTC: To convert from another Timezone to UTC, use the static TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc method.

note

You can create the TimeZoneInfo with the help of the TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById method, in which you need to specify the name of the time zone you want, such as India Standard Time.

List Trigger Criteria

To set your list trigger criteria, choose the fields listed below.

Field	Description
List	Specify the List by its name.
Events To Monitor	Choose the event to use as a trigger for the job. You have the following options: Inserted: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a row is inserted to the List Updated: Check this if you want to activate the trigger whenever a row is updated in the List Deleted: Check this if you want to activate the trigger on deleting a row from the List
Apply Filters	Toggle or enable this to add a List Trigger Filter.

Binding List Trigger Parameters

The List Trigger provides runtime parameters that contain essential details about the list item that triggered the event. These parameters allow you to dynamically pass contextual data from the triggered row into your automation process, enabling more accurate and responsive behavior. You can bind these runtime parameters to the corresponding input arguments of the process to ensure they react appropriately based on the type of event and the associated data.

Default Runtime Parameters

The following runtime parameters are automatically available when a List Trigger is activated:

Name	Type	Description
$ListItem.EventType	string	Event for which trigger fired.
$ListItem	object	The full data of the list item involved.

Supported Event Types

The List Trigger can respond to specific types of changes that occur in a list. These changes are categorized into three event types: Inserted, Updated, and Deleted. Each event type provides context for what action was performed on the list item, allowing your automation process to handle the event accordingly.

The table below describes each supported event type:

Event Type	Description
Inserted	Triggered when you add a new item to the list.
Updated	Triggered when an existing item is modified.
Deleted	Triggered when you remove an item from the list.

Usage With Example

1. Process Setup Create a process with the following input arguments:

   

2. List Configuration Create a list with the following columns:

   

3. Trigger Configuration Configure a List Trigger to reference the above process and list. The runtime parameters from the list item were mapped to the corresponding process arguments as shown below:

   

4. Trigger Execution When an item in the list is created, updated, or deleted, it fires the trigger and executes the process. The output appears as follows: