OwnerRez triggers are a powerful tool that enables users to automatically initiate the sending of user-edited system or user-created custom messages based on certain conditions, events, and/or time-based conditions being met. Triggers can be set up to respond to various booking events and be very useful in streamlining your vacation rental business processes by reducing errors and improving efficiency by reducing the need for manual intervention.
Learn more by reading the Trigger Overview and Create a Trigger support articles. If you haven't read those first be sure to do that.
This article lists common questions and answers about Triggers that are not covered elsewhere.
- When do triggers run exactly?
- My message template is not available for selection in the Action dropdown list. How do I fix this?
- How do I create and send a Welcome Email with a guest's door code?
- Can I create a trigger for inquiries and/or quotes?
- Why aren't my triggers sending my emails?
- Can I create a trigger for my guests to sign my Renter Agreement that booked on other listing sites?
- I want a trigger to go off the day after arrival. If my guest arrives on Friday, and I want a trigger to run on Saturday morning, would that be 0 or 1 day after arrival?
- How can I see when my triggers will send my message templates?
- How can I disable a trigger?
- Is it possible to create a trigger to respond to a "Book Now started by..." inquiry from my website?
- How can I send an inquiry trigger for just Vrbo or Airbnb?
- My triggers are skipping! How can I get them to "unskip?"
When do triggers run exactly?
Triggers run hourly to attempt to send your message template. If the conditions are met, it will send your message template once. It's important to note that triggers (both immediate and scheduled time-based) will never be sent if the trigger conditions are not met. The first time the condition matches, the trigger will send your message once and will no longer attempt to send it after that.
Here's a very general breakdown of when triggers send your message template.
- Immediate type triggers do just that. They send your message template immediately when an event (inquiry, booking, cancellation, etc.) occurs. The action may take a few seconds actually to occur, but the trigger runs immediately.
- Scheduled Time type triggers are time-based. They send your message template at a certain time relative to an event, before or after that event has occurred. Scheduled triggers are evaluated and sent every hour relative to the trigger event. Ex. A trigger can be sent at precisely 9 am on the morning of arrival but not at 9:15 or 9:20 am.
- Retry options for Scheduled Time type time-based triggers can be set to retry the trigger with various settings that allow you to define how many times the trigger will try to send your message template if the conditions are not yet met. For instance, if the retry setting is set to "only run once," that trigger will not try again if the first scheduled time is missed because the Conditions were not met.
If Conditions have not been met, the trigger will be prevented from running, even at its designated time. Conversely, if Conditions change (such as bookings, cancellations, renter agreements signed, etc.) and the conditions for a trigger that wasn't sent earlier are now applicable, it will run to send your message template.
My message template is not available for selection in the Action dropdown list. How do I fix this?
Don't see your message template in the Trigger > Action dropdown menu? There could be a couple of reasons for that. Review the Action section of the Create a Trigger support article to troubleshoot why your message template is not available.
How do I create and send a Welcome Email with a guest's door code?
Yes, see our Send Guest Arrival Information support article for instructions.
Can I create a trigger for inquiries and/or quotes?
See the Reply to inquiry with a bookable quote support article for specific instructions, and be sure to check out our Trigger Examples support article for instructions and ideas for all sorts of guest messaging templates and triggers.
Why aren't my triggers sending my emails?
Our trigger system deals with a lot of complicated scenarios, and one of the complications is "missed runs". A booking can have a trigger fail to send for a lot of reasons, the biggest of which is non-match condition. ie. the booking did not match the trigger condition (eg. renter agreement not signed) and it doesn't run when at the normal time, but then, later, the condition matches (eg. the renter agreement finally got signed), so it is eligible to run. It can be very difficult to know whether the trigger is supposed to run, based on conditions that didn't match but now does, and the timeline of how long ago the arrival or departure is.
In particular, before arrival triggers with retry until arrival is retried until the day after arrival -- to catch the case where you have a last-minute booking at night and a trigger set to send on arrival morning. After-departure triggers can retry up to 30 days after departure to catch cases like a trigger with a secdep released conditions or reviewed tag conditions and make sure those go out. Triggers automatically don't retry for events that would have occurred before a trigger was created to avoid unexpected emails going out.
Can I create a trigger for my guests to sign my Renter Agreement that booked on other listing sites?
Yes, see our Ask Channel Booking Guest Without Contact Info, to Provide Contact Info and Sign Renter Agreement support article for more information.
All OwnerRez users have a Send Renter Agreement email template and corresponding trigger to send that Renter Agreement (to 5 listing sites: Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeToGo, TripAdvisor and Vrbo) already set up in their account when they API connect with those listing sites, and appear in their Trigger list. Users can add additional Renter Agreement triggers for other listing sites as well.
I want a trigger to go off the day after arrival. If my guest arrives on Friday, and I want a trigger to run on Saturday morning, would that be 0 or 1 day after arrival?
Setting up a trigger to send your message template the day after arrival should be set to 1 day after arrival. Sending something the night of arrival would be Day 0.
How can I see when my triggers will send my message templates?
For individual bookings, users can review specific details about when a message will be sent or why it won't be sent by reviewing the Trigger Forecast section of the Trigger Setup & Configuration support article.
How can I disable a trigger?
Saved Triggers are automatically enabled. Users can disable a trigger by navigating to Settings > Messaging > Triggers > check the box left of the desired trigger to be disabled and click on Disable.
Is it possible to create a trigger to respond to a "Book Now started by..." inquiry from my website?
No. When you get that alert saying that "Book Now started by John Smith", the inquiry has a status of "Quoted" at that point, meaning that the guest has already seen a quote. Trigger conditions do not include quote statuses at this time, so there is no way to create a trigger based on a quote status.
How can I send an inquiry trigger for just Vrbo or Airbnb?
You can follow the specific directions from one of the examples listed in the As soon as an inquiry is received section to send either a channel or an email template for Vrbo or a channel template for an Airbnb inquiry.
Vrbo
In the conditions section of your trigger, add the condition of "Listing Site is Only Vrbo" to send your email template for Vrbo.
Airbnb
In the conditions section of your trigger, add the condition of "Listing Site is Only Airbnb" to send your channel template for an Airbnb inquiry.
My triggers are skipping! How can I get them to "unskip?"
Perhaps you've noticed that your triggers are skipping with the guest messages listed as "Skipped" in specific Bookings > Messages > Automatic Messages tab > Status column.
How did this happen? It's possible that the triggers were skipped when the bookings were imported. When importing bookings, "Skip Triggers" is a default selection. Next time, consider unchecking the "Skip Triggers" checkbox when importing bookings.
That helps your future triggers, but what about now? You can "unskip" individual booking messages by navigating to specific Bookings > Messages > Automatic Messages tab > and in the right Action dropdown menu, select Unskip.
If you have many Automatic Messages that are being Skipped, navigate to your Trigger Forecast (Settings > Messaging > Triggers > upper right Forecast button) > and select all of the Skipped messages and click on Unskip.