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Event actions

Event actions are the what of a subscription. The Event actions card at the bottom of the detail page holds them. A subscription with no actions matches events but does nothing — which is a perfectly good way to park a configuration you're still building.

The two tabs​

The card has two tabs, and both show the same list of actions from different angles. The number in brackets after each tab name tells you how many entries it holds.

  • Values — the action's own settings: its type and the fields that type needs. This is the tab you'll use most.
  • Triggers — the follow-up events an action raises when it succeeds. Used to chain automations together; see Chaining events.

An action can have values, triggers, or both. An action that only has triggers does nothing itself — it exists purely to pass the event on.

Adding an action​

Click Edit on the subscription, then Add on the Event actions card. What you get depends on which tab is open:

  • On Values, a New event action dialog opens where you choose the action type and fill in its settings.
  • On Triggers, you get the trigger list instead, and the action is created with triggers only.

Every action has:

  • Name — an optional label. Worth filling in when a subscription has several actions, because it's what appears in the execution log.
  • Action type — what kind of thing the action does. The rest of the dialog changes to match. All eight types are described on Action types.

Confirm the dialog to add the action to the list, then Save the subscription to store it. An action with no values filled in at all is not added.

Editing and removing​

With the subscription in edit mode:

  • Click an action's row in either tab to reopen its dialog.
  • The Delete button inside the dialog clears just that part — the values, or the triggers — and leaves the action itself in place.
  • The bin icon at the end of the row removes the whole action.

If you clear the values from an action that has nothing else on it, SHIPM8 warns you that the entire action will disappear.

Changing the action type clears the settings

Switching an existing action to a different type empties its settings, because each type has its own fields. Note down anything you want to keep before you switch.

How several actions behave​

  • All actions of a matched subscription run, in the order they appear in the list.
  • They run one after another, not in parallel.
  • If one fails, the rest still run. The failure is recorded per action in the execution log, and the subscription as a whole is marked partially successful.

So if step two really depends on step one having worked, it's safer to split them across two subscriptions and chain them with a trigger — see Chaining events.