Getting started with triggers

Who is this article for?

This article will be useful to you if are a company on PartnerStack looking to learn about how to use triggers to create your program's offers for your partners.

Triggers are "if-this-then-that" statements used to build and customize offers that help automate your partner program. You can use triggers in many ways to simplify administrative tasks such as calculating partner commissions, organizing partners to keep your program structures, or sending messages to partners.

Triggers are highly customizable and are heavily influenced by the data available through your integrations. Because of this, we highly recommend talking to your customer success expert before you start creating them yourself.

In this article, you’ll learn the basics of triggers and how you can use them to incentivize your partners.

Key things to know about triggers

• Triggers are internal to your program. Partners do not see trigger's names, or rules, or have any awareness that any action was the result of a trigger. 
  • Be sure to include a detailed offer description so partners understand how they can earn commissions. 
• Triggers are comprised of Events, Rules, and Actions. When an Event occurs that meets the Rules, then an Action will happen.
• The PartnerStack system evaluates trigger rules when PartnerStack is made aware of the event, not the event timestamp itself. Read more about this in the 'Technical information' section below.

Creating triggers

To create a trigger, you must first have full trigger permissions. Check with the admin of your PartnerStack account if you need to manage triggers.

To create a new trigger:

1. Log in to your PartnerStack account
2. Under Advanced Settings, click Triggers to visit the Trigger menu
3. Click the "Create trigger" button (If you cannot see the button, check with your PartnerStack account admin to get full trigger permissions).
4. Define your Trigger Event, Actions, and associated Rule logic
5. Click "Save & Activate Trigger"

Your trigger is now live and listening for the configured Event. Triggers will not retroactively issue commissions for events that occurred before the trigger was created.

Editing triggers

The Event, Action, or Rules of a trigger cannot be updated. You may however make changes to the Trigger's:

• Internal Trigger name
• Offer description (visible to partners)
• Commission type (flat or percentage)
• Commission amount
• Commission currency
• Active or Inactive status

Edit a Trigger's name, offer description or commission details:

1. In your Triggers tab, click "View" next to the trigger you'd like to edit
2. Update the internal trigger name, offer description, or commission details
   1. If updating the commission details (type, amount, currency) be sure to also update the offer description so it is not out of date
3. Click "Save"

Edit a Trigger's Active/Inactive status:

1. In your Triggers tab search for or locate the trigger you'd like to update
2. In the Trigger's "Active" column click on the toggle to change the trigger's status
   
   1. Clicking a green toggle will turn it grey and the trigger will be inactive
   2. Clicking on a grey toggle will turn it green and the trigger will be active

Deleting triggers

You can permanently delete triggers you no longer need. Deleted triggers cannot be recovered, or reactivated, however you can rebuild triggers if you would like to recreate a trigger you previously deleted.

To delete a trigger:

1. In your Triggers tab, click three stacked dots next to the trigger you wish to delete
2. Click "Delete"
3. Read the prompt, and click "Delete trigger"

Trigger components

Triggers are comprised of Events, Rules, and Actions. When an Event occurs that meets the trigger's Rules, then an Action will happen.

Trigger events

PartnerStack support triggers events relating to the most common business events that occur in partner programs. We actively develop new trigger events so this list is not final or exhaustive.

Don't see the event you need in-app? Reach out to your success manager or email Support@PartnerStack.com to submit a request.

Supported trigger events

• A transaction is created: A new transaction is created for a customer. Transactions can be created manually in-app, via webhook integration with a payment provider, Workato recipe, Zapier Zap, PartnerStack REST API or Javascript snippet, or imported into PartnerStack.
• A customer is created: A new customer is created and linked to a partner. Customers can be created manually in-app, via webhook integration with a payment provider, Workato recipe, Zapier zap, PartnerStack REST API, or Javascript snippet or imported into PartnerStack.
• An action is created: Actions are used to capture business events like downloads, onboarding milestones, or even the user visiting a page. Actions can be created Workato recipe, Zapier zap, or PartnerStack REST API.
• A partner joins a group: A partner is manually moved into a group or automatically moved into a group as a result of another trigger's action.
• A deal stage changes: A deal managed by a partner changes stage. Use rules to target a specific deal stage. A deal stage can be updated in-app or via a CRM integration.
• A lead is closed: A lead submitted by the partner is closed. Use rules to target specific lead stages, names, or the date submitted.
• A lead is qualified: A lead submitted by the partner is qualified. Use rules to target specific lead stages, names, or the date submitted.
• A lead stage changes: A lead submitted by the partner is updated to a lead stage of your choice, which must be specified in the trigger rules
  • Note, if you do not specify a lead stage in your trigger rule, this trigger will fire for all lead stage changes

Trigger actions

If events are the input to a trigger, the action is the output. In other words, a successfully fired trigger will result in the action you have set up.

Each action type has a corresponding configuration that lets you ensure the action fits the needs of your program.

We actively develop new trigger actions so this list is not final or exhaustive. Don't see the event you need in-app? Reach out to your success manager who can pass on the request.

Action: Generate a commission 

The "Generate a commission" action will create a commission for the partner associated with the trigger event, i.e. the partner that referred the customer who completed a transaction.

Commissions are positive increments of currency that will appear instantly to the partner once the trigger is fired. Note that commissions require approval, and payment before the partner can withdraw from PartnerStack.

The amount of the commission issued to the partner is determined by the Offer associated with the trigger. If you select "Generate a commission" as your trigger action, you will see the option to "Set up a commission" where you will enter the offer description, select the type of commission, and enter the commission amount.

• Offer description: Partner-facing text that describes the incentive to eligible partners. Typically these objectives involve submitting paying referrals, meeting a revenue threshold, or moving sales pipeline to closed/won. i.e. "10% of every monthly subscription", "$50 for your first 10 sales", "5% VIP Bonus"
• Commission type (Flat or percentage): Determines how the commission amount will be calculated
  
  • Flat: Issues a commission to the partner with a static dollar value. Enter the amount in dollars and cents and select a currency. Note that all commissions are converted to USD at the spot ForEx rate before being paid to the partner.
  • Percentage: Issues a commission to the partner a % of the value of the Trigger event. Enter the percentage of a transaction the partner will receive. The trigger event must be "Transaction Created" to use a percentage amount type.

Controlling who can see offers

Offers visibility is directly connected to the ruleset you configure in the trigger. This ensures that only partners who are eligible to earn an offer can see it on their dashboard. Offer visibility is controlled by partnership rules: Group, Tier, Tag, and Partner Key.

What's the difference between triggers and offers?

Triggers are the if-this-then-that statements that build out your offers. A trigger looks for a specific event to occur (i.e. a customer signup, or transaction) and evaluates the event based on rules you create. If the event meets all the rules of the trigger, the trigger will complete an action (i.e. generate a commission, create a drip commission, move the partner's group, apply a tag).

An Offer is an incentive you provide to partners for referring customers or driving revenue to your program. The offer description is what partners will see when applying to your program, and on their dashboard summary page. The offer lets them know what action they need to take, and what your program will issue as a commission. Not all triggers will have an offer. Group move triggers and triggers that apply tags will not include an offer for partners. 

Action: Change Group

The "Change group" action will update the group of the partner associated with the trigger event, i.e. the partner that referred a specific number of customers or generated a specific amount of revenue.

If you select the "Change group" action, you will see the option to "Set up group move action" where you select the group the partner will move to when the trigger successfully fires.

Action: Apply a tag

The "Apply a tag" action will apply a tag to the partner associated with the trigger event, i.e. tag a high-earning partner with "Top partner". Tags are labels you create to help organize and issue commissions to your partners. For more information on using tags see the Tagging your partners support guide.

Note you will first need to create a tag, before you can create a trigger that apply that tag to partners. 

Action: Generate a drip commission

The "Generate a drip commission" action will enable you to build out a drip commission. Drip commissions are a type of commission that does not automatically generate as a result of a sign-up or transaction (or specified action). Drip commissions can be used to create an offer that requires you to issue a commission to a partner after a certain time has passed, or over a specified period of time.

If you select "Generate a drip commission" as your trigger action, you will see the option to "Set up a commission" where you will enter the drip description, select the type of commission, enter the commission amount, and set the drip cycle length, delay length, number of occurrences and see a preview of how the drip will perform.

For more information on drip cycles, delays, and occurences see the Drip Commissions support guide.

Trigger rules

Rules are the conditions that must be met before a trigger can fire. When an event occurs in PartnerStack, the triggers engine evaluates the context of that event against your active triggers. If the context of the trigger event meets the rules of the trigger, then the system will continue with the action.

Each trigger rule is an individual condition that the trigger event will either pass or fail. Rules are made up of an Object, Field, Conditional operator, Value, and optionally one or more Filters.

Individual rules can be strung together using AND and OR conditions to model sophisticated business logic.

Supported trigger rules operators

What are aggregate trigger rules?

Aggregate trigger rules use functions like SUM or COUNT to provide a roll-up value for you to reference in your ruleset. By default, all objects and events are included in the aggregate calculation but we understand this might not always be appropriate.

For instance, you may want to only SUM or COUNT objects that meet certain criteria. You can achieve this by using applying one or more filters to the aggregate rules.

To filter an aggregate trigger rule:

1. Apply an aggregate trigger rule to your trigger (Aggregate triggers end with a COUNT or SUM)
2. Click "Filter the above condition"
3. Enter your filter logic on the indented rule that begins with "Where"
4. Add further conditions by clicking "Filter the above condition" again
5. To remove a filter rule, click the trash icon next to the filter rule

In this example, this trigger will fire when a transaction is created and the Partner has $100.00 in sales for the 'Enterprise' product line.

Advanced rule logic with "AND" / "OR" blocks

Let's say you've set up a trigger and rule that issues commissions to onboarded partners 10% for each sale, however, you want to ensure your partners refer customers that stay active for at least 3 months - unless it's an enterprise sale of course! In that case, you'll give the partner the commission right away.

Rules can be grouped with conditional logic (OR, AND) to help you model the business logic that makes sense for your program and revenue streams.

Trigger rules can be configured into blocks of logic that will be evaluated together to either pass or fail. When configuring the blocks it can help to read the rules from top to bottom like a sentence to ensure you're following the desired logic.

Let's walk through the example above:

• Partner needs to be at least 90 days old and in the "Affiliates" group
• The customer must be 3 months old or older
  • or if the customer is an Enterprise sale, then ignore that 3 months and issue a commission instantly

To create this logic you would:

1. Use an AND block to ensure all scenarios require a partner to be in the program for minimum of 90 days and is in the "Affiliates" group
2. Use an OR block to ensure the customer has either reached a maturity of 3 months, or is purchasing an 'enterprise' product plan

When complete, your rules would look like this:

Trigger evaluation order

In your Triggers tab the sub-tab "Trigger Evaluation Order" allows you to view, and configure the order in which your triggers are evaluated for a specific event type.

For example, if you have three triggers based on "Transaction created", two potential commissions, and one group move trigger, you want to be sure that the triggers fire in the correct order.

Given the triggers:

1. Bronze Group offer: $5 per transaction
2. Group move trigger: Move from Bronze -> Silver at 5 sales
3. Silver Group offer: $10 per transaction

If these three triggers were place in the above order, this would result in two commissions firing for the same partner on their 5th sale. They would be issued a commission for the bronze group offer, moved to the silver group, and issued a commission in the silver group.

To ensure one transaction does not result in multiple commissions, we would place the triggers in the following order in the Trigger evaluation order tab.

1. Bronze Group offer: $5 per transaction
2. Silver Group offer: $10 per transaction
3. Group move trigger: Move from Bronze -> Silver at 5 sales

Reordering your triggers can change the performance of your offers. If you're unsure of how to achieve your desired trigger setup or need any assistance reordering your triggers, reach out to our support team at support@partnerstack.com for assistance.

Frequently asked questions

What triggers should I create?

Triggers are highly customizable and are heavily influenced by the data available through your integrations. Because of this, we highly recommend talking to your customer success expert before you start creating them yourself.

Why can't I create new triggers?

Full trigger permissions are required to create new triggers. You may have 'read-only' access to triggers, allowing you to see but not create, modify, or delete triggers. If you need access to create triggers, speak to an Admin on your account.

Can I edit live triggers?

Once a trigger is created you can edit the internal name, commission details, and the active status of the trigger. If the trigger action is a commission, you can edit the name and value of the associated offer.

How can I hide an offer from a Partner?

Deactivating a trigger using the toggle on the triggers list will both deactivate the trigger, and hide it from partners. 

When do my partners get their commissions?

When a partner meets your trigger conditions and earns a commission, the commission first appears in their partner Commissions tab as 'pending'. This commission is then reviewed by your team to make sure everything is attributed correctly.

Once your team approves the commission it will appear on your next partner commission invoice. Once that invoice is paid and the charge has been processed, the partner will be able to withdraw their commissions. For more information on your partner commission invoice see the Paying your partner commissions and Partner commission invoices support guides.