What triggers a workflow to start?

Every workflow begins with a trigger—the event that fires it. Choosing the right trigger determines who starts the flow, when, and with what starting context.

Ticket trigger

A workflow starts automatically when a ticket is created (or a new message arrives on an existing ticket) that meets the trigger criteria—such as arriving in a specific inbox or matching a tag.

• Use this for triage: first-response, categorisation, and routing.
• Use it for follow-up: adding internal notes, requesting missing information, or kicking off downstream steps.
• The workflow has access to the full ticket, sender, and message from the start.

Chat trigger

An employee or admin runs the workflow by name from the Harriet chat interface. The workflow receives the user's message as its starting context.

• Use this for on-demand processes: creating a new starter record, filing a benefit change, or kicking off an investigation.
• The user can interact with the workflow through the ticket that is optionally created alongside it.

Scheduled trigger

A workflow runs on a recurring schedule (for example, every Monday morning, or the first of each month).

• Use this for proactive work: sending regular reminders, compiling reports, or checking for overdue items.
• No human starts it; the workflow can create a ticket if it needs to surface information to your team.

Webhook trigger

An external system calls a Harriet URL to start the workflow, passing structured data in the request.

• Use this for integration-driven events: an HRIS fires when an employee record changes, or an IT tool notifies Harriet when a software licence is expiring.
• The workflow receives the webhook payload as its initial context.

Example

Scenario: You want to auto-acknowledge every ticket in the Parental Leave inbox and immediately ask for the employee's planned start date.

• Trigger: ticket arrives in the Parental Leave inbox.
• Step 1: send a holding reply to the employee.
• Step 2: ask for the start date and wait for their reply.
• Step 3: confirm receipt and assign to the HR admin on duty.

Guardrails

• A ticket trigger can fire multiple times on the same ticket (e.g. on each new message). Design steps to be safe to run again, or add conditions that prevent duplicate actions.
• Scheduled workflows are not tied to a ticket unless you explicitly create one inside the workflow.
• Webhook triggers require IT to set up the integration and register the Harriet webhook URL in the calling system.