Overview

Every workflow starts with exactly one trigger. The trigger defines what event kicks off the workflow.

Trigger Types

Trigger	When it runs
Manual	When someone clicks "Run" in the platform
Webhook	When an external system sends data to your workflow's URL
Scheduled	At specific times or intervals (daily, hourly, etc.)
Email Received	When an email arrives at your workflow's address
EDI Transaction	When an EDI document is received

Pick based on what starts the process in real life, not what the workflow does.

Manual Testing, one-off tasks, user-initiated processes

Webhook Integrations with other systems, real-time events, API-driven automation

Scheduled Daily reports, periodic cleanup, recurring tasks

Email Received Process incoming emails, extract attachments, auto-responses

EDI Transaction Supply chain documents, partner data exchange

Each trigger provides data that your workflow can use:

You define what input fields to collect when someone runs the workflow.

The payload sent to your webhook URL becomes trigger.payload. You define the expected schema.

Provides the scheduled time and run count. Useful for "daily digest" type workflows.

Provides sender, subject, body, and attachments:

trigger.from
trigger.subject
trigger.text
trigger.html
trigger.attachments[0]

Provides the parsed EDI document with standard fields based on transaction type.

Webhook triggers give you a unique URL like:

https://steel.flint.com/workflows/triggers/webhook/{your-webhook-secret}

Send a POST request to this URL to trigger the workflow. The request body becomes available as trigger.