Platform objects

Specification Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

At a glance

Definition

Triggers in Reply are built-in automations that run based on specific events or conditions, such as a contact opening an email or replying to a message. When a certain event or condition occurs, you define an action — for example, assign a contact stage, move the contact to a sequence, or remove them from a sequence — so these updates happen automatically.

For example, if a contact opens an email or clicks a link, you can automatically assign them the Interested contact stage. This identifies engaged prospects and lets you continue working with them without extra steps.

Some triggers are predefined — they exist and work by default rather than being built by hand. Account created is one of them: out of the box it assigns the New account stage to every newly created account. A predefined trigger can be customized, or you can leave it alone and create your own trigger for a different event, condition, and action combination.

Purpose

Triggers remove the manual bookkeeping between an outreach event and the record change it should cause. They are the mechanism for reacting to engagement (opens, clicks, replies, LinkedIn acceptances), to failures (bounces, invalid LinkedIn URLs, blocked connection requests), and to lifecycle events (contact created, contact finished sequence) without a person watching for them. In Team Edition Public they also remove duplication: one trigger covers every team member instead of one trigger per person.

Relationships

Creation

1. Go to Settings → Triggers.
2. Click New trigger in the upper-right corner.
3. Enter a name for your trigger, then select the event in the When section.
4. (Optional) Use the If section to add conditions.
5. In the Then section, choose the action or actions to perform.
6. Save the trigger and enable the toggle to activate it.

Configuration

The When / If / Then structure

Every trigger is built from three parts. When selects the single event that starts the automation. If is optional and holds the conditions that must match for the trigger to proceed — a specific sequence or sequence step, for example — so the automation runs only for the contacts you want, at the right stage. Then holds the actions to perform; a trigger can carry more than one action.

Trigger catalog

The full list of trigger events, with descriptions and the actions available for each.

Eleven of the seventeen events share the same eight-action vocabulary — add to a list, move to a sequence, remove from a sequence, mark as finished, update a contact field, pause the contact, assign an owner, set a contact stage. Five offer a reduced subset: Contact created, Contact updated, Contact finished sequence, Contact opted out, and Sequence email was bounced. Account created is the only event that acts on an account instead of a contact, and its only action is setting an account stage. Account stage values are listed in Statuses.

Conditions

Conditions refine a trigger so the automation runs only for the contacts you want, at the right stage — a specific sequence or sequence step, for example. The conditions reference below uses the labels shown in the Team Edition documentation; conditions marked for TE are available only when Team Edition Public support for triggers is enabled.

Three events are labelled differently in the two references. Contact clicked the link in sequence email is the trigger catalog's Contact clicked on a link, Sequence email was categorized is Inbox category set for reply, and Sequence email was replied is Contact replied to sequence email.

Account created is documented separately: its If section filters newly created accounts by criteria such as the exact account name, domain, company size, and owner, so the trigger runs only for accounts that match. Conditions for the LinkedIn events and for Contact finished sequence are not covered by either reference.

Team Edition behavior

Triggers work in both Team Edition Private and Team Edition Public modes. In Team Edition Private they affect only your contacts. In Team Edition Public they can apply to all team contacts: when a team member creates a trigger, it works for the whole team — one trigger can apply to the sequences of every team member, so a team of ten does not need ten identical triggers.

When you need something narrower than the whole team, add filters — Country, Contact owner, Sequence owner, and similar. For example, a trigger can move contacts to a sequence only when the contact owner is a particular team member. The modes themselves are specified in Workspaces and roles.

Processing behavior

A trigger is inert until it is saved and its toggle is enabled. Once active, it evaluates when its When event occurs; if conditions are present in If, they must match before the Then actions run. Actions apply automatically to the contact — or, for Account created, to the account — that the event belongs to. Because actions include moving a contact into another sequence and removing them from the current one, triggers interact directly with enrollment and stopping rules; see Contact enrollment and Sequence stopping.

Worked examples

The following automations show the shape of a typical trigger. Each row is one trigger, because a trigger listens to exactly one event — flagging both openers and clickers means building two triggers with the same Then action.

Limits

• 17 trigger events in the catalog; a trigger listens to exactly one event
• Each event offers a fixed action set — you cannot use an action the event does not list
• Account created is the only event that acts on an account, and Set Account Stage is its only action; it ships as a predefined trigger that assigns the New stage by default
• Assign Owner is marked TE Only on every event that offers it
• Contact owner and Sequence owner conditions require Team Edition Public support for triggers to be enabled
• Sequence owner on Call was logged applies only to calls related to a sequence
• A trigger runs only while its toggle is enabled
• The documentation does not state a cap on the number of triggers, a processing delay, or a retry policy for failed actions

Edge cases

• In Team Edition Public, a trigger created by one member applies to the whole team by default — add Country, Contact owner, or Sequence owner filters when the automation should be narrower.
• In Team Edition Private, the same trigger definition affects only the contacts of the person who created it.
• Two separate events cover LinkedIn connection failures: one for contacts whose privacy settings block the request, one for contacts whose email is missing or does not match the address associated with their LinkedIn account.
• Contact finished sequence fires both when a prospect completes every step and when the status is set to Finished manually — see How statuses change.
• The trigger catalog and the Team Edition conditions reference use different labels for three of the same events, listed under Conditions above.
• Conditions are not documented for the LinkedIn events or for Contact finished sequence; what the If section offers for those events is not stated.
• Account created already runs as a predefined trigger assigning the New account stage — customize it rather than adding a second trigger for the same event if you want a different default stage.

FAQ

Where do I create a trigger?

In Settings → Triggers. Click New trigger in the upper-right corner, name it, choose the event in When, add conditions in If if you need them, choose the actions in Then, then save and enable the toggle. A saved trigger with its toggle off does not run.

What can a trigger do once it fires?

Depending on the event: add the contact to a list, move them to a sequence, remove them from a sequence, mark them as finished, update a contact field, pause the contact, set a contact stage, or assign an owner (Team Edition only). The Account created event instead sets an account stage.

Can a trigger apply to only one sequence?

Yes, for the events that expose a Sequence condition — opens, clicks, categorized replies, replies, opt-outs, sends, and bounces. Opens, clicks, sends, and bounces can be narrowed further to a specific sequence step, and opens and clicks can also require a minimum number of views or clicks.

How do triggers behave across a team?

In Team Edition Private a trigger affects only your own contacts. In Team Edition Public it can apply to all team contacts, so one trigger replaces one-per-member duplicates; use Contact owner or Sequence owner filters to scope it back down. Team Edition support for triggers is documented as beta.

Does the Account created trigger need setting up?

No. It is a predefined trigger that works by default and assigns the New account stage as soon as an account is created. To change that, open it and select another stage from the drop-down — New, Qualified, Meeting booked, Negotiating, and the rest — or add conditions in If such as account name, domain, company size, or owner so it stages only the accounts you care about. Set account stage is the only action this event offers.

Which trigger events cover LinkedIn?

Five: connection accepted, message reply received, connection request forbidden due to privacy settings, connection request forbidden due to lack of email, and LinkedIn URL is invalid (missing data). The last three are failure events, useful for pulling contacts with unusable LinkedIn data out of a sequence — see Why LinkedIn steps fail.

Related

• Contacts · Lists · Sequences · Companies
• Statuses — the contact and account stage values a trigger can set
• How statuses change · Contact enrollment · Sequence stopping
• Workspaces and roles — Team Edition Public and Private modes
• Inbox · Reply management — where inbox categories come from
• Configure account settings · Filter contacts

Build with Reply

• REST API: docs.reply.io — check the trigger operations and their status in the reference
• MCP: agents.reply.io/mcp — an agent can list triggers, inspect one, enable or disable it, and delete it