Trigger Events

Trigger Events occur when a Journey begins via a Trigger. They are different from Session Started Events, which always fire when a Journey starts, regardless of how the Journey is triggered.

For example, a Journey might begin when a new user calls or sends a text message to a certain phone number. The Journey triggered by receiving a call would fire a different Trigger Event than the Journey triggered by receiving an SMS.

Only the following Triggers have associated Trigger Events:

  • Receive a Call
    • Event: Invoke
  • Receive an SMS
    • Event: Invoke
  • Subscriptions
    • Event: End Point Actions

Working with Trigger Events

Trigger Events are accessible in the Triggers Builder. Clicking on the relevant Trigger in the Tree opens the Action Builder in the Inspector. This Action Builder defines the Action Chain that the associated Trigger Event will fire.

Associating different Triggers with different Action Chains allows the beginning of a Journey to change as needed based on how each user first interacts with the application. For example, if a Journey can begin with either the Receive a Call Trigger or the Receive an SMS Trigger, it would make sense for the latter to invoke the Start Voice Bot Action and the former to invoke the Start Chat Bot Action.

Event Variables

There are no Event Variables associated with the Receive a Call or Receive an SMS Triggers. Any information collected automatically from incoming calls or texts is instead found under session.start, a global namespace accessible through the Journey. (For more on what information is automatically collected at the start of a Journey, see Standard Journey Data.)

Subscriptions Triggers, however, will store any payload information under the event namespace. For instance, if a Journey begins when a Subscription Trigger sends a payload formatted as follows:

{
 "name":"John Doe", 
 "company":"Airkit"
}

then the name attribute in the given JSON object can be referenced as:

event.name

or simply

name

because the event namespace is implied when working in Events.