Set up your Zap trigger

Last updated: May 22, 2020

A trigger is an event that starts a Zap. Once you’ve set up a Zap, Zapier will monitor for that trigger event.

You want to set up a Zap that sends a direct message in Slack to yourself every time you receive a new email in Gmail. In this Zap, the trigger is the new email in Gmail.

There are two types of triggers:

Polling trigger: the majority of triggers are polling triggers. With a polling trigger, Zapier will check for new data from your trigger every 1 to 15 minutes in order to start your Zap, depending on your pricing plan.
Instant trigger: with an instant trigger, your trigger app will send Zapier an instant notification whenever there's new data. Zaps with instant triggers are labeled Instant on your dashboard.

Zapier relies on a few methods to make sure that your Zap does not trigger multiple times for a single "new" item. Learn more about how triggers are deduplicated in Zaps.

1. Choose your app and event

In the Zap editor, go to the 1. When this happens step.
In the Choose App & Event section, search for and select the app that will trigger the Zap.
Click the Choose Trigger Event dropdown menu and select the event that occurs in the selected app that will trigger the Zap. For example, you can choose to trigger the Zap every time you receive a new email in Gmail.

2. Choose your app account

Next, choose the app account you want to use in the trigger.
- If you've already connected an account to Zapier for the trigger app, click the dropdown menu and select the account.
- If you've not connected an app account, click Sign in to [app] and follow the instructions to connect your app account to Zapier.
Click Continue.

3. Customize your options

Next, customize your trigger options. For example, you can choose to trigger the Zap only when a new email in Gmail belongs to a certain category. Make sure to select or fill in any required fields.
Click Continue.

The Customize step may not always be applicable, depending on the trigger app and trigger event combination that you’ve selected. If that's the case, move on to the next step.

4. Test your trigger

Click Test trigger. If Zapier finds an example item, you'll proceed to set up the rest of your Zap.

Zapier will attempt to find a recent item from your trigger app to use in the Zap. For example, if your trigger is a new email in Gmail, Zapier will pull in a recent email you've received. This email can then be used as test data in an action step later in the Zap. If you want to use a different item, you can change the test data in your Zap trigger.

If Zapier is having trouble finding data for your trigger, try adding new data for the event in your trigger app.

Once you’ve set up your trigger, you can continue setting up the rest of your Zap, whether that’s setting up your action, or adding a search step.

If you want to control when your Zap runs, consider using a scheduled trigger.

Polling is distributed across Zapier's servers in a queue, and polling times are not always exact. This means if you try to time multiple Zaps to happen in a specific order closely together, it may not happen as you expect. You might also not be able to time your Zaps to happen at an exact minute.

Since instant triggers are not on a cycle, their timing should be fairly predictable. However, if you are sending a large number of webhooks within a few seconds of each other, Zapier will distribute the load across multiple servers. If you expect webhooks that closely follow each other will be processed exactly in the order in which they are sent, this might not always be the case due to network and processing factors.

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Set up your Zap trigger

2. Choose your app account

3. Customize your options

4. Test your trigger

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