Creating a Trigger

What a Trigger Is

A campaign says “message these people now.” A trigger says “message anyone who ever becomes one of these people.”

A campaign action is a one-off: you point it at a segment and press Run Action. A trigger is standing instructions. You point it at a single tag, and from then on it catches members as they qualify — without anyone opening Engage.

Everything else about it is the same machinery as a campaign action: a sender, a subject and body, a question with one-click responses.

Triggers. The list sits under Campaigns in the sidebar, alongside Trigger Run History.

Opening Triggers

1. Go to Datascout Engage and log in with the credentials provided by the Datascout team.
2. In the left sidebar, open the Campaigns section and click Triggers.

The Trigger List

Each card is one trigger, not one send.

The trigger list. Each card carries the trigger's name, its short code and how it sends.

On the card	What it tells you
Emoji and name	What this trigger is for.
Short code, in brackets	The identifier used elsewhere in Engage.
Manual / Automatic badge	Whether it sends on its own or waits for approval.
Status	Whether it is active at all.
Run Now	Evaluates this one trigger immediately, without waiting for the daily run.
Edit	Reopens the full form.

Above the list, tabs filter by Active, Inactive or All, and a search box narrows by name.

There is no delete

A trigger can be switched Inactive, which stops it, but nothing on the card or in the form removes it. An inactive trigger stays in the list under the Inactive tab.

Creating One

Click Add New Trigger. The form opens inline, above the list.

The create form. The fields above Email Content are the ones specific to triggers.

Field	What to put in it
Emoji and Trigger Name	What this is, at a glance. The name is required.
Short Code	A simple identifier, required.
Active	On by default. Leave it on unless you are preparing something for later.
Who Receives This Trigger	The tag that defines the audience. See Choosing the Tag.
Resend Timeframe	How long to wait before this trigger may message the same person again.
Send Workflow	Automatic sends on its own; Manual holds each message for approval.
Sender	Who the email comes from.
Message Format	Templated Message or Template Builder.
Question & Responses and Email Content	The same question builder and email fields as a campaign action.

Send Workflow starts on Manual

Unlike most defaults this one is the cautious choice, and it is easy to miss because only the color marks which option is selected. On Manual, every message the trigger produces waits in Messages → Requires Approval until a person releases it. On Automatic it goes out on its own.

Only two message formats here

Campaigns offer three. Triggers offer Templated Message and Template Builder — there is no AI-Generated option.

If Create Trigger stays greyed out

The button is the only validation on this form. There is no error message, no red text and nothing marking which field is at fault. If it will not activate, check that the Trigger Name and the Short Code are both filled in.

Choosing the Tag

This is the field that decides who gets the message, and it behaves differently from the tag pickers elsewhere in Datascout.

The tag picker. Each tag carries the number of members who currently hold it.

One tag per trigger. There are no checkboxes — picking a tag replaces whatever was there.

The list is ordered by how many members hold each tag, largest first, not alphabetically. The number beside each tag is the most useful figure on the screen: it is the size of the audience this trigger will eventually catch.

Because the order is by size rather than by name, and because an account can carry hundreds of tags, search rather than scroll. The box matches anywhere in a tag’s name, so loc-sc finds both loc-sc and loc-scotland.

No match. The picker offers nothing to create.

You cannot create a tag here

If the tag you want does not exist, this picker will not make it. Trigger tags come from your iMIS data, applied by an IQA extension — so a new one is set up in iMIS, not in Engage. This is the difference from the tag picker on a member’s profile, which does let you create.

When a Trigger Actually Runs

Two separate things have to be true, and the app only warns you about one of them.

The warning shown when the account's sending is not configured.

First, the account has to be set up for sending. An administrator sets a time zone and a daily send time under Settings → Sending.

For this to happen	The account needs
Any daily evaluation at all	a time zone saved
Automatic triggers evaluated daily	a time zone and a daily send time
Run Now on a single trigger	neither

Second, the trigger itself has to have a tag. Without one, Run Now is greyed out — and this is the part nothing announces. Hover the greyed button and it explains itself; otherwise a trigger with everything else filled in simply never fires.

Two reasons for nothing happening, not one

If a trigger is doing nothing, check both: the banner tells you about the account, and the greyed-out Run Now tells you about the trigger. Fixing one does not fix the other.

Once both are in place, triggers are evaluated once a day at 5:00 AM in the account’s time zone, or immediately when someone clicks Run Now.

Trigger Run History

A log of every evaluation, under Campaigns → Trigger Run History.

Trigger Run History before anything has run.

A row is one evaluation pass, not one trigger. The daily run covers every active trigger at once, which is why one of the columns counts how many were evaluated.

Column	What it counts
Started	When the pass began.
Source	Whether it was the daily run or someone pressing Run Now.
Triggered by	Who started it, for a manual run.
Triggers evaluated	How many triggers the pass looked at.
Members matched	How many members carried the tags.
Messages created	How many messages the pass produced.
Skipped (duplicate)	How many matched members were passed over.
Outcome	How the pass ended.

Skipped is not a failure

Skipped (duplicate) counts members who matched a trigger’s tag but had already received that message inside its Resend Timeframe. A large number there means the resend protection is working, not that something went wrong.

The page has no filter, no search and no export — it is a plain log.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause & fix
Run Now is greyed out	The trigger has no tag in Who Receives This Trigger. Hover the button and it says so.
Create Trigger stays greyed out	Trigger Name and Short Code are both required. Nothing on the form marks which is missing.
Nothing has run, and the list looks fine	Check the banner at the top. Daily evaluation needs a time zone saved under Settings → Sending, and Automatic triggers need a send time as well.
The tag you want is not in the picker	It matches anywhere in the name, so search rather than scroll. If it genuinely is not there, the tag has to be set up in iMIS first — this picker cannot create one.
Messages were created but nobody received them	The trigger is on Manual. Its messages are waiting in Messages → Requires Approval.
Skipped (duplicate) is high	That is the Resend Timeframe suppressing people who were messaged recently. Shorten the window if you want them reached sooner.
You want to remove a trigger	You cannot. Switch it Inactive instead.

Note

Screenshots use sample data; the triggers, tags and figures shown are illustrative and will differ from your own account.

Questions about triggers? Contact support@datascout.ai.