Workflow Triggers

Workflow Triggers

The Trigger is the event that starts a Workflow. Every workflow has exactly one trigger. Tadabase supports several trigger types — for record changes, schedules, manual/component-based runs, user account events, and incoming webhooks from external services.

Trigger types at a glance

Trigger	What fires it	Common use
Record Created	A new record is added to the chosen table.	Welcome emails, new-record notifications, auto-tagging.
Record Update	An existing record is edited.	Status-change notifications, audit logging, downstream syncs.
Record Created or Edited	Either of the above.	Anything that should happen any time the record changes.
Schedule	A recurring schedule (hourly, daily, weekly, custom).	Daily reports, overdue-invoice reminders, weekly digests.
Manual	An explicit user or app action — e.g. a "Trigger Workflow" action link.	One-off tasks the user kicks off from a page or table component.
User Event	A user logs in, logs out, registers, or updates their password.	Login/logout audit logs, "Last Login" stamps, registration onboarding.
Incoming Webhook	An external service POSTs to the workflow's unique webhook URL.	Receiving data from Zapier, Make, your own backend, or any third-party service.
External Data Source	A user clicks a Trigger Workflow action link on a record that lives in an External Data Source component (Knack, HubSpot, Stripe, Airtable, etc.).	Acting on records that aren't stored in Tadabase but are surfaced through an External Data Source.

An Email Catcher trigger that fires when an email is delivered to a workflow inbox is on the roadmap. You'll see it in the trigger picker tagged Coming Soon.

Record Created

Fires immediately after a new record is created in the table the workflow is scoped to. The new record becomes the workflow's source record, and every step has access to its field values.

Example: When a new Customer is added, send a welcome email and create a follow-up Task assigned to a sales rep.

Record Update

Fires every time an existing record in the table is edited — by a form submission, by another workflow, by an inline edit, by an API call, or by a record rule.

You can narrow this down with Trigger Filters so the workflow only runs when specific fields change to specific values. Filters live on the trigger configuration panel.

Example: When an Order's status changes to "Shipped," email the customer their tracking link.

Be careful when a Record Update workflow also updates the same record — it can re-fire itself. Tadabase has a chain-depth guardrail to stop runaway loops, but the cleanest fix is to put a Trigger Filter on it so the workflow only runs when the change actually matters.

Record Created or Edited

Fires for both events with the same workflow. Useful when you want one workflow to handle both new and updated records — for example, re-running a calculation any time the source data changes.

Schedule

Runs the workflow on a recurring schedule. You set how often it runs and when it starts.

• Built-in occurrences: Every Minute, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly.
• Advanced: Use the advanced scheduling editor to set a custom RRULE (e.g. "Every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 AM," "The 1st and 15th of every month at 6 AM").

Scheduled workflows usually loop over a set of records (e.g. all overdue invoices). You can apply Trigger Filters to limit which records the workflow processes on each run.

For full details, see the Scheduled Workflows article.

Manual

The workflow only runs when something explicitly triggers it — usually a "Trigger Workflow" action button on a page component, a custom action link, or another workflow that calls it.

Manual workflows are great for "on-demand" jobs the user controls: regenerate a report, recalculate totals, send a reminder right now. Because they're not on a timer or tied to a record save, they won't fire on their own.

User Event

Runs when a specific user account event happens. The trigger lets you pick which event to listen for:

• User Logged In — fires after a successful login.
• User Logged Out — fires when the user logs out (or their session ends).
• User Registered — fires when a new user account is created.
• User Updated Password — fires after a password change.

The workflow has access to the user record. Common uses are audit logging, "Last Login" stamps, and onboarding flows.

Incoming Webhook

Receives data sent to Tadabase from an outside service. The workflow exposes a unique URL — when an external system POSTs to that URL, the workflow runs and the request body becomes the source data the steps can read.

Use this when an external service (Zapier, Make, your own backend, a third-party form, a payment provider's webhook, etc.) should trigger work in Tadabase. It's the inverse of the Trigger Webhook action — that one sends data out; this one receives data in.

Incoming Webhook workflows are server-to-server — they have no end-user session. The "Logged-in User" value source is not available; build steps around the data in the webhook payload instead.

External Data Source

Runs when a user clicks a Trigger Workflow action link on a record that lives in an External Data Source component (Knack, HubSpot, Stripe, Airtable, and more). The workflow runs against that specific record, so you can act on data that isn't stored natively in Tadabase. See the External Data Sources documentation for setup.

Trigger Filters

Trigger Filters let the workflow stay quiet most of the time and only run when the data matches conditions you define. They live on the Trigger card and apply before any steps run.

Examples:

• "Only run when Status is set to Approved."
• "Only run when Total is greater than 500."
• "Only run for orders where Country is in (US, CA, MX)."

For Schedule and Manual triggers, the filters decide which records the workflow loops over. For Record Created/Updated triggers, the filters decide whether the workflow runs at all for the saved record.

Changing the trigger after the fact

You can change a workflow's trigger any time. If you switch from Record Created to Schedule (or vice versa), Tadabase keeps your steps but you'll usually need to update any "current record" references — a scheduled workflow loops over many records, while a record-created workflow has exactly one.