Workflow Triggers

Workflow Triggers

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

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 Updated	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 action — e.g. a "Trigger Workflow" action button.	One-off tasks the user kicks off from a page or table component.
User Event	A user logs in, logs out, registers, or changes their password.	Login/logout audit logs, "Last Login" stamps, registration onboarding.

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 Updated

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," text the customer their tracking link.

Be careful when a Record Updated workflow also updates the same record — it can trigger itself again. Tadabase has built-in chain depth limits to stop runaway loops, but the cleanest fix is to put a condition on the trigger so it only runs when needed.

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, the IP address, and the user agent. Common uses are audit logging, "Last Login" stamps, and onboarding flows.

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.