The trigger is what starts a workflow. Three common options:

1. Scheduled trigger — "Run at a fixed time"

You choose when the workflow runs: e.g. "Every day at 9:00", "Every hour", "Every Monday at 8:00". The Birkly server runs the workflow at those times. No one has to click anything.

Use cases

• Send a daily or weekly digest.
• Every hour, call an external API to sync or check something.
• Run a cleanup or "publish scheduled posts" job at a set time.

How to set it

When creating or editing a workflow, select Scheduled as the trigger. Then set:

• Schedule: Often presets like "Every hour", "Daily", "Weekly", or a cron-style expression (e.g. "0 9 *" for 9:00 every day).
• Timezone: So "9:00" is in the right time zone.

Save the workflow. The server needs to have the scheduler enabled (cron or internal runner); on hosted Birkly this is usually already set up.

2. Webhook trigger — "Run when someone/something calls a URL"

Birkly gives the workflow a unique URL. When anything sends an HTTP request (usually POST) to that URL, the workflow runs. The "anything" can be: your form handler after a contact submission, Zapier, IFTTT, a payment provider, or your own backend.

Use cases

• Contact form submitted -> workflow runs -> Slack notification or email.
• Payment completed -> provider calls your webhook -> workflow runs -> update internal system or send receipt.
• CI/CD pipeline finishes -> calls webhook -> workflow runs -> post to Slack or update a dashboard.

How to set it

1. Create or edit a workflow and choose Webhook as the trigger.
2. The admin shows the webhook URL (e.g. https://your-cms.com/api/automation_webhook.php?workflow=xyz). Copy it.
3. Optionally set a secret token. Then only requests that include this token (e.g. in a header) will run the workflow. That way random people can't trigger it by guessing the URL.
4. In your form handler, payment callback, or other app, send a POST request to this URL when the event happens. You can send JSON or form data in the body; that data is often available inside the workflow as "payload" for conditions and actions.

Example: trigger from a form

After the user submits your contact form, your server (or Birkly's form endpoint) can do:

curl -X POST "https://your-cms.com/api/automation_webhook.php?workflow=abc123" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Jane","email":"jane@example.com","message":"Hello"}'

The workflow runs and can use payload.name, payload.email, payload.message in conditions (e.g. "only if payload has email") and in actions (e.g. "Slack message: New contact from {{ payload.name }}").

3. Entry trigger — "Run when a CMS entry changes"

Instead of calling a webhook from your code, you can have Birkly fire a workflow automatically when an entry is created, updated, or deleted inside the CMS. No external call needed.

Use cases

• When a new blog post is published, post a summary to Slack.
• When a comment sub-entry is submitted on a post, send a moderation notification.
• When a product review is added, call a backend URL to update the average rating.

How to set it

1. Create or edit a workflow and choose Entry created, Entry updated, or Entry deleted as the trigger.
2. Use the collection picker to choose which collection to watch (e.g. "Blog posts"). Leave it blank to trigger on any collection.
3. If you want to react only to sub-entries (e.g. only to new comments, not to the blog post itself), enable the sub-collection filter and choose the sub-collection (e.g. "Comments").
4. Save and enable the workflow.

Testing

• Scheduled: Temporarily set the schedule to "every minute" or use "Run now" if the admin offers it, to verify actions without waiting.
• Webhook: Use curl or Postman to POST to the webhook URL and confirm the workflow runs and appears in the Automation logs.
• Entry trigger: Create or update an entry in the chosen collection and check the Automation logs to confirm the workflow ran.