HubEngine: Trigger

Several trigger options are available in HubEngine to initiate a synchronization schedule or to trigger subsequent actions:

• Trigger manually
• Frequency
• Webhook
• External Webhooks
• Trigger further Plans

You can find these options in the plan overview under the Trigger tab. The individual options can be combined as required. In the screenshot shown, only manual triggering is enabled.

When triggering manually, you start the HubEngine plan using the trigger button in the top right corner. You have the option to initiate the trigger in two different ways:

• Trigger by IDs: With this trigger, you can synchronize individual records specifically by their system IDs. To do so, enter one or more IDs (comma-separated) into the respective fields and trigger the synchronization for these records.
• Trigger by Date Modified: This trigger synchronizes all changes that have occurred since the last trigger by date modified.

With time-based triggering, you can either use the predefined frequencies or configure a cron job.

“The cron daemon is used for the time-based execution of processes in Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, or macOS to automate recurring tasks – cron jobs.” – Wikipedia

By default, synchronization frequencies from minutely to yearly are available. To validate the format of your cron job, you can use tools such as Crontab Guru. Five parameters must be specified:

Minute Hour Day Month Weekday

Examples of Cron Jobs

• Minutely: * * * * *
• Hourly: 0 * * * *
• Every day in August at 00:05: 5 0 * 8 *
• Wednesdays at 16:00: 0 16 * * 3

Plans can also be triggered in real time via an external call (webhooks). Two options are available:

• Trigger URL
• Action URL

The Trigger URL can only be accessed via a POST request and is therefore available as an API endpoint. This allows the plan to also be triggered via code.

The Action URL can be called through a standard web request. The Target URL defines the page to which the user will be redirected after the Action URL has been called.

The article Targeted synchronization (trigger) of specific records explains in detail how to use these functions.

External webhooks are follow-up actions executed after a plan has run. A POST request can be sent to the URL specified there in order to trigger further actions after the plan execution.

It is also possible to trigger the execution of additional HubEngine plans afterwards.

• Triggering additional plans is only possible for plans that are triggered via the Call (Real-Time) option. The plan can then be selected there.
• The selected plans are only triggered once the execution of the plan in which the settings are configured has been completed.
• The selected plans can be chained sequentially to ensure that plans run in a defined order.

Note

If additional plans are configured to run, this synchronization will be triggered every time the plan is executed. If you have established a logical sequence, you should ensure that you review which trigger sources are configured.

Example

In Plan A, a specific record is synchronized by ID. This execution results in Plan B being executed normally based on the modification date. However, if it must always be ensured that the changes from Plan A are available before Plan B runs, an inconsistency may occur: Plan B processes all changes since the last synchronization, while Plan A has synchronized only a single record and the next trigger by modification date may not be scheduled until the next full hour.