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Scheduled Triggers

Invoke a Workflow at specific time intervals

Scheduled Triggers are an automatic type of Trigger. This means that once the Trigger is created, they do not require any user input.

Need a Workflow to happen on a daily, weekly, or annual cadence? A Scheduled Trigger is your best bet.

There are two steps to setting up a Scheduled Trigger:

Define the Trigger
Create the Scheduled Trigger, either via the CLI or at runtime

1. Define the Trigger

A Trigger contains a Typescript payload with the following parameters:

Parameters

Field	Description	Required
`type`	The type of Trigger: `scheduled`	⚫
`name`	The name of the Trigger	⚫
`workflow`	Path to Workflow that the Trigger initiates	⚫
`description`	The description of the Trigger
`inputs`	The inputs provided to the Workflow
`schedule`	When and how often the trigger will activate. See below	⚫

The schedule object

Field	Description	Required
`start_time`	A date string of the first scheduled trigger	⚫
`timezone`	timezone string to use for scheduling
`frequency`	details on what cadence Trigger will activate. See below
`occurrence_count`	The maximum number of times Trigger will run
`end_time`	if set, this Trigger will not run past the provided date string

The frequency object

Field	Description	Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Yearly
`type`	How often the Trigger will activate. Can be `daily`, `weekly`, `monthly` or `yearly`	⚫	⚫	⚫	⚫
`on_days`	The days of the week the Trigger should activate on		⚫
`repeats_every`	How often the Trigger will repeat, respective to `frequency.type`	⚫	⚫	⚫	⚫
`on_week_num`	The nth week of the month the Trigger will repeat			⚫

The inputs object

Pass any of these values into a Workflow's inputs!

Field	Description	Required
`type`	The type of Trigger: `scheduled`
`team_id`	A unique identifier for the workspace/team where the Trigger occurred.
`enterprise_id`	A unique identifier for the enterprise where the Trigger occurred.
`event_timestamp`	A UNIX timestamp in seconds indicating when the Trigger occurred.
`data.user_id`	A unique identifier for the user

Example TypeScript payload

The following is a TypeScript payload creating a Scheduled Trigger:

  name: "Example",
  type: "scheduled",
  workflow: "#/workflows/example",
  inputs: {
    example: { value: "example" },
  },
  schedule: {
    start_time: "2022-03-01T14:00:00Z",
    end_time: "2022-06-01T14:00:00Z",
    timezone: "UTC",
    frequency: {
      type: "monthly",
      on_days: ["Monday"],
      on_week_num: 3,
      repeats_every: 2,
    },
  },

2. Create the Scheduled Trigger

There are two ways to create a Scheduled Trigger. You can:

create a Scheduled Trigger with the CLI
create a Scheduled Trigger at runtime

Create a Scheduled Trigger with the CLI

To create a Scheduled Trigger with the CLI, you'll need to create a trigger file. The trigger file contains the payload you used to define your Trigger.

TypeScript trigger files take the following form:

import { Trigger} from “deno-slack-api/types.ts”;

const trigger : Trigger<typeof ExampleWorkflow.definition> = {
  // your TypeScript payload 
}

export default trigger;

Once you have created a trigger file, use the following command to create the Scheduled Trigger:

slack trigger create --trigger-def "path/to/trigger.ts"

Create a Scheduled Trigger at runtime

Create a Scheduled Trigger at runtime using the client.workflows.triggers.create method within the relevant Function file.

const triggerResponse = await client.workflows.triggers.create<typeof ExampleWorkflow.definition>({
  // your TypeScript payload
});