Introducing Triggers

What is a Trigger?

Why are they useful?

Trigger Terms

There are several key features that go into making up a trigger that are as follows: 

Trigger: A set of actions that are performed automatically by StaffSavvy when something happens.

Event: Something that happens that can ‘fire’ a trigger. For example, an Event might involve a staff member completing a training stage.

Action: Something the system needs to do when the event happens. E.g. sending an email.

Triggers are extremely flexible ways to automate your workflow, making simple and useful changes to staff accounts.

The image above shows the Triggers list, which is where all of your triggers will be shown. It is found under System > Manage Triggers. You can then add a trigger under the Actions menu.

This page gives you access to edit triggers, edit actions, and copy the trigger. Each trigger can be switched on or off. You can set up triggers and turn them on as needed by using the option shown next to their current status. You can also set a category for each trigger to help organise your triggers and filter by search. This is useful if you have many triggers and need to access them quickly.

Creating a Trigger

Trigger Setup

Trigger Events

The Triggered when… drop-down chooses the event that will start the trigger running. Depending on the type of event, you will also be shown some additional options. You can choose from the drop-down list what will trigger this action.

There are a lot of trigger events that fall into these main categories, relating to: Absences, Awards, Check-ins, Documents,  Expenses, Holiday, Recruitment, Regular Scheduling, Reports, Shifts, Staff, Time Entries, Training and Work Eligibility.

Dated Triggers

With triggers related to duration such as ‘Number of days…’ you have the option to set up how soon the trigger itself is enacted. Duration triggers can now be set to run immediately. This might be used for expiring contracts, where you want to trigger an action immediately after this, and don't require a grace period. 

The other option available allows you to link multiple dates to a single trigger action. Once you have selected the Specific Date option under Triggered When…, a drop down box will appear that allows you to add a series of dates that the trigger action will happen on. You would need to select the period of time you want to apply this over. You must also select the number of instances before the event will be triggered. This could be a single date or many. This is particularly useful for quarterly, 6-monthly or fixed date triggers.


A trigger event, is an event that is triggered by the number of occurrences happening over a certain number of days, so it might be 3 successful shifts over 14 days or 10 shifts within 90 days. 

A practical example of when this might be used is if you were trying to track lateness, say you wanted to set up an action for if someone had been late at least 5 times within a month. 

Then, under Triggered When, you would select the When X number of shifts have been completed option. This option will check the system and when the required number of shifts has been met will trigger an action.

To make this suit this purpose, you will need to add a couple of further configuration options. Firstly, under Number of occurrences option you would select five (for the five late shifts) and for the Over previous X days option input thirty days. Now to ensure the system is only taking into account shifts where the staff member has been late, under the Attendance Flag option select Arrived Late. Only the shifts that have been ticked will be included, so the system will only count the late shifts. So therefore when the system notices five Arrived Late shifts within thirty days it will trigger the action.

After selecting the Trigger event you will need to fill in any remaining details. 

Prior notifications

Additionally, you are able to set prior notifications on triggers with dates, including birthdays, length of service durations, contract expiry dates and custom field dates. This means that you can set the trigger to go off a week before the event or date takes place, or even up to a year in advance, which is helpful for actions that need prior preparation. 

NEW:  Our most recent trigger events added to the system are: 

• The ability to set a trigger for when a staff member logs more than the minimum hours in their contract period (this is refreshed and checked daily).
• The ability to set a trigger for when a contract document has been fully signed and completed.
• The ability to set a trigger for when a staff member logs more than the minimum hours in their contract period (this is refreshed and checked daily).
• There is a new option for a trigger to go into effect when a resource library item is new or has expired.

Trigger actions

Once you have created your trigger, click Edit Actions to view and add your Actions. You can have as many actions as you wish on a trigger. Actions range from adding/removing skills and venues from an employee’s account to sending emails and creating tasks. When you have chosen your Trigger Action, you can finalise the other details surrounding it. These will be different depending on the type of action.

Some  action options include being able to email all accounts assigned to a specific level using our trigger filters, or our most recent addition to actions is to Assign a Check-in form via actions. Most actions are straightforward and simply require you to pick an option, such as assigning an exam or form or document. Whereas some options are more complex.

Sending an email as an Action

 As an example, if you chose the action: Email Squad, first you would need to select the Squad you want to email. Secondly, it will give you space to write out the email and the email subject heading.
 

Setting a Task as an Action

Another option is to send a Task to self. This will automatically send a task to the person effected by the Trigger Event. So, if we go back to the example from earlier. If the action is triggered by a staff member who has been late five times within a month, the task would go to the staff member who has been late repeatedly.

If you were building this Trigger, you might give the action a title, Request lateness form. Then, under What should we do? you would select the Task to Self option. 

The subject line might be something like 'Please complete a lateness explanation form'. Then you will set up a message to prompt a staff member to complete the attached lateness form, which might look like this.

" Hello #name#,

You have been late to a scheduled shift twice in the last 14 days. Please complete the attached form so that we can review the reasons for your lateness. We recommend you make adjustments to your travel arrangements or availability to ensure you are not late in the future."

Once you have chosen actions, and configured all of the details, click save. If the trigger is enabled, the changes will be made instantly, and any new events will use the new settings. All executed actions on a trigger are recorded and will be available for audit purposes in a future update.

Triggers in practice

Now we have gone through how triggers work, and various example let us explore what that could look like in practice by walking through an example step by step. For this example, say you want to set up a reminder to managers that lets them know when a staff member's birthday is approaching.

You would first set up the details, and call it Birthday Reminder. You can also add a note about the purpose of the Trigger for other managers to see. You might set it to trigger the day before

Under Triggered When, you would select the Triggered on the staff member's birthday option. 

(The triggered when button offers a wide variety of triggering actions that can be quite specific, so make sure to look through them all to see if they would be useful for your company's running.)

Then select when you want the reminder to be sent - with this reminder you can choose to set it on the day or up to two weeks before.

 Then you might want to set exemption levels, for those you do not want to trigger the action to. The exempt levels follow access levels. For this example we want to exclude freelancers from this Trigger.

Once you save this page you will be prompted to add an action. Under What should we do? you want to select the Email Line Managers option.

Then, create a subject line for the email and start writing the email content. It might look something like this 

" A staff member has a birthday today - please send them a message! "

If you wanted to add dynamic formatting you could personalise your email by copying and code into the main text box. For example if you copy 'Name:' here into the text, it will then include the full name of whoever triggered the event. Additionally, if you then copy and paste ‘link’, the system will go through to find the name, and then it will also give a link to their account. It would look like this:

#name# has a birthday today - please send them a message! 

#link# 

This means whoever the email has been sent out to will know the name and have the link to the account of the person who has the birthday and will be able to act accordingly.

Once saved and turned on, when it is a staff member's birthday their line manager will get an email saying it's that staff member's birthday.