Triggers

Follow

Triggers are a powerful feature of Donorfy which allows you to define custom behaviours when specific events happen, such as a new Constituent being added, a new volunteer application and so on.

What is a Trigger?

A Trigger = an automation.

triggers are easy to set up and comprises of:

  1. a Trigger Type - a Donorfy event, such as “a new Transaction has been created”

  2. a Condition - such as £500 or more

  3. one or more Actions - such as “send and email the Chief Exec”; “enrol the donor in an automated sequence of emails” and so on

Watch the overview and tutorial on Triggers here.

 

Availability

Triggers are available to both Essential and Professional Plans as follows:

  • Essentials and Starter - a maximum of 3 Triggers
  • Professional and Enterprise - unlimited number of Triggers

Trigger Types and conditions

Triggers are "fired" when the Trigger Type event happens. However, you may only wish the Actions to be performed if the Trigger Action (for example - RPI Added) was for a certain Campaign.

You can control that by adding a Condition to your Trigger. Conditions are filters in corresponding Donorfy Lists.

You can add a delay to your Trigger which means you can create a trigger to send a follow-up response, for example, this Trigger is to be delayed by 30 days:

mceclip1.png

 

 

The table below shows all of the available Trigger Types and the types of List whose filters can be used to provide further conditions for the Trigger's Action(s) to be performed.

Trigger Type

List Types for trigger conditions

Notes

Constituent Added

Constituent

These Triggers are executed automatically, according to their conditions (if present)

 

 

 

 

Constituent Updated

Constituent Deleted

Activity Added

Constituent and Activity

Activity Updated

Activity Deleted

Transaction Added

Constituent and All Transactions (note: not Transaction Payment or Transaction Allocation)

Transaction Updated

Transaction Deleted

RPI Added

Constituent and Recurring Payment Instruction

RPI Updated

RPI Deleted

Pledge Added

 

Constituent and Pledge

 

Pledge Updated

Pledge Deleted

Scheduled

n/a

Scheduled Triggers run on a user-defined schedule - Daily, Hourly, Every x minutes

Manual

n/a

Manual Triggers require a user to click a button to initiate them, via Data Management | Triggers

 

Example of an RPI List with a filter. This example is ensuring that the Trigger only fires if the RPI was added today and the campaign in Spring 2022.

mceclip0.png

 

Trigger Actions

Actions are the tasks you want the trigger to perform. The expandable option below describes all the available actions. Please note that not all actions are available to all Trigger Types - see table below.

 

Email User

Sends an email to one or more recipients. Recipients must be Donorfy users. The email is composed in the Action, and provides placeholders for data to be "merged" into the subject and body.

The email is sent via the Email Server Settings (see Settings | Configuration | Email Server Settings).

mceclip1.png

 

Email Constituent

Sends an email to the constituent that is the subject of the Trigger. The email is composed in the Action and provides placeholders for data to be "merged" into the subject and body.

The email is sent via the Email Server Settings (see Settings | Configuration | Email Server Settings).

mceclip0.png

 

Create a Word Document

Creates a mail merge to a Word document. This is especially useful for Thank You letters, event attendance or volunteer forms, etc. 

Once your template document is uploaded to the Trigger Action and the merge fields have been matched to the available placeholder fields in Donorfy, when a constituent matches the criteria set within the Conditions. 

There is an option to set the Acknowledged on Date, as today, for Transactions that are being thanked via this method.

mceclip2.png

Documents will be available to download under Data Management > Documents to print

 

Mark Acknowledgement as Thanked

Will set the Acknowledged on Date for Transactions to be today.

 

Initiate Mailchimp Automation

Initiates a Mailchimp automation campaign for the constituent related to the Trigger event. More information on setting up an automation campaign can be found in this article.

mceclip2.png

Optionally, selecting a Purpose will check whether the Constituent has allowed communication through that Purpose before running the Action.

 

NOTE: only the Constituent email address and name are sent to Mailchimp as part of the Trigger. Tags and Purposes that are mapped via your Mailchimp settings will be sent when you perform the Donorfy to Mailchimp sync from your List.

Please note

Mailchimp are in the process of sunsetting the Classic Automations feature. The option is now only available to accounts that have previously created a Classic Automation. Click here for further details

If your Mailchimp account does not have this feature, the suggestion is to use a Donorfy Trigger coupled with the Supporter Journey option.

 

Initiate Mailchimp Journey

Initiates a Mailchimp Journey campaign for the constituent related to the Trigger event.

mceclip0.png

 

NOTE: The constituent will need to be existing within the Mailchimp Audience for this Trigger action to be successful. This can be done by delaying the Trigger send and ensuring a daily sync to Mailchimp of all new Constituents. 

 

Dotdigital Program Enrolment

Constituents can be enrolled in dotdigital programs (sometimes referred to as Supporter Journeys) using Donorfy Triggers. You can find out more about  this here: Enrolling a contact in a Dotdigital program

 

Email Constituent using Dotdigital

Transactional (or one-off) emails can be sent through dotdigital using Donorfy Triggers. There are many reasons why you might want to send a transactional email, including acknowledging form submissions and acknowledging donations. You can find out more about  this here: Using Triggers to send transactional email (Dotdigital)

 

HTTP Post

NOTE: This Action requires good knowledge of APIs and coding. And is something we'd recommend a web developer does on your behalf.

Sends an HTTP POST request to another service's API. You can optionally define custom headers to be sent with the HTTP payload. Please note these are not stored encrypted.

mceclip4.png

The payload can be different depending on the Trigger Type. Currently, there is only one payload type.

 

Example of a standard payload

This HTTP body is sent from a Constituent Added event.

{
"TriggerType": 6,
"EntityType": "Constituent",
"EntityId": "632c9e6f-bded-ea11-b5d9-501ac580925b",
"EntityNumber": 583,
"Timestamp": "2020-09-03T08:15:31.5659533+00:00"
}

The optional headers section is for custom data that you would like to add. This does not use any placeholders or data fields from within Donorfy - it is free text data only.

 

Execute Stored Procedure

NOTE: This action is available only to customers with the Own Azure option.

Runs a Stored Procedure on your Microsoft Azure SQL database. For example, a valid value would be [dbo].[sp_whoisactive]

 

 

Trigger types and the available Actions

Certain Actions are restricted to certain Trigger Types. This table shows which actions can be applied to Triggers of the various types:

Trigger Type Email User Email Constituent Create a Word Document Mark Ack as Thanked
Initiate Mailchimp Automation Initiate Mailchimp Journey Dotdigital Program Enrolment  Email Constituent using Dotdigital HTTP Post Execute a Stored Procedure
Constituent Added  
Constituent Updated
Constituent Deleted
Activity Added    
Activity Updated
Activity Deleted
Transaction Added    
Transaction Updated
Transaction Deleted
RPI Added ✓     
❌ 
RPI Updated
RPI Deleted ❌ 
Pledge Added
















Pledge Updated
Pledge Deleted
Scheduled
Manual

 

 

Only run if all previous actions are successful. If the option is ticked (yes) it will result in the action being skipped if any of the steps above it in the Trigger are unsuccessful or error.

Comments

0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Powered by Zendesk