# Create your first trigger automation
**Trigger automations** allow you to respond to **user actions or events in real time** with personalized messages. They’re ideal for onboarding sequences, re-engagement flows, or any scenario where timing matters. This guide will walk you through setting up your first trigger automation in Batch, covering **targeting, scheduling, and message composition**. Let’s get started! 🚀
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The ‘Automations’ tab is dedicated to ‘automated’ campaigns such as **Recurring** and **Trigger.**
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Here is a short guide to help create your first omnichannel trigger automation on Batch following the 4 steps of the automation builder:
1. **Set up entrance**: which event triggers the campaign, its lifetime, its target, etc;
2. **Manage the first delay and cancellation events**: when to send the email and which event can cancel it;
3. **Compose your message**: the content of the campaign that will be sent to the user;
4. **Add a second message** sent after a delay.
First, go to Automations > New automation, start a new Omnichannel trigger, and name it:
**Optional:** you can add [labels](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/customer-engagement-platform/settings/labels) to your automation (up to 5):
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[Labels](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/customer-engagement-platform/settings/labels) serve two main purposes: they allow you to set a marketing pressure limit across all campaigns/automations sharing the same label, and they enable you to filter campaigns/automations based on their assigned labels.
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Then, let's set up your trigger automation! 💪
## Automation Settings
It is time to define when to send your automation and who to send it to!
### 1. Entry Event
By clicking on the Select trigger frame a new modal opens. There, you will be able to choose the right trigger event and all the orchestration settings.
💡 Let's take the example of a cart abandonment scenario! The idea is to bring in all users who have reported the “added\_to\_cart” event with a value of over 50 euros or more:
After selecting the trigger event, there are 4 settings:
* **Capping**
The capping is the limit on the total number of entrances followed by at least one message sent to the user.
If you put “2”, it means the user will not enter more than twice an automation that sent him at least a message.
🔎 More examples
If the capping is “2” in an automation that has 5 messages steps:
* case 1: the person enters, waits in a delay step and ends up being excluded from the automation by a cancel event before being addressed by a message, it’s not counted for capping.
* case 2: the person enters once and receives 5 messages, it counts as “+1”
* case 3: the person enters and receives only 2 messages and then is excluded due to a cancel event, it counts as “+1".
By clicking the toggle button you will be able to define that limit 👇
* **Grace period**
Use the grace period to set a minimum delay in hours or days for a user to re-enter an automation after exiting it. A user can exit an automation for two reasons:
* Because of an **exit** event
* He arrived at the **end** of the automation.
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Note that if a user enters the automation but exits it before receiving any messages, we do not apply the grace period. So he could re-enter the automation right after exiting it if he triggered the event again.
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* **Parallel automations**
By default, if the user fires the trigger event of the automation multiple times, it will be **reset**.
You may want to parallelize automation flows and allow the user to trigger several times the same automation. You can do that by activating the Parallel automations mode.
The [**Parallel** **automations**](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/customer-engagement-platform/22-cep-orchestration/05-trigger-automations) mode allows you to trigger an automation each time the user fires the trigger event with a new event parameter (Ex: Trigger an email for each trip booked by the user based on the trip ID parameter). This ID must be one of the attributes attached to the event or the event label and can only be a String.
Click on the Continue button to continue to set up your automation!
### 2. Targeting
Click on the Targeting icon to display the targeting modal where you will define the segmentation of your campaign.
By default, Batch considers that you will target your entire audience. First, you can select a specific country or language.
Then, you can refine your segmentation by clicking:
* '**Add** **Condition**': from then on, you will be able to select native targeting elements (Email domain, etc.), but also profile attributes (data specific to your app business and selected thanks to the tagging plan).
* '**Use** **Segment**': this will allow you to call [Segments](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/customer-engagement-platform/profiles/segments) as blocks in the targeting and combine segments (*inclusions and/or exclusions*) by calling up to 10 segments in your targeting. When a segment is linked to an orchestration, you can access / view the segment by clicking on the eye icon 👀
* '**Use** **Audience**': you can add a specific [Audience](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/mobile-engagement-platform/analytics/audience) to your email (*find how to create a Custom Audience* [*here*](https://help.batch.com/en/articles/3539787-how-can-i-send-a-test-to-several-devices-at-once)).
Also, note that if you focus sendings on opt-in contacts (which will happen for all non-transactional use cases), **the opt-in status will be checked before each email sendings**, to make sure the user is still opted-in. If, along with an automation, the person opt-out, it will continue its progress but not be messaged (until the user potentially re-optin).
#### Play with AND/OR option
You can add up as many conditions as you want, and create specific scenarios by clicking on 'AND/OR':
When you are satisfied, click on the **Continue** button!
### 3. Timing
Click on the **Timing** icon to manage the lifetime of the automation by choosing specific starting and ending dates:
### 4. Quiet times
You can add Quiet times setting to specify either quiet hours or quiet days, during which the profiles in this automation will not be messaged.
Click on the Quiet times icon to choose the right timeslot:
You have two fallback strategies to choose from if your communication is sent during these Quiet Times:
* Send at the next available time;
* Skip the message and continue;
## Delay and Exit events
Now that you have successfully set up your trigger event, you can manage when to send your automation and if you want to **cancel** the **sending** after the occurrence of chosen events:
The first delay can be conditional to a date passed in the event. For example, it’s possible to have in the event 1st January 2024 and set up a +3 days timer. Note that in that case, we’d not allow a longer than 64 days wait time as a default setup.
The first delay and all others can also be a simple delay of up to 30 days.
* Exit event(s)
By clicking the toggle button you will be able to add one or several **exit** **events**:
Users who trigger one of the exit events will exit the automation. You can use a custom event and apply filters based on additional event data (*Label, Attributes, Tag collection*).
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If you are using **Parallel automations,** the exit event **must have the same ID** as the entry event. If the ID differs, the cancellation will not be processed.
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### Add further messages and delays
You can add **other** **automation** **steps** with delays after your first message by clicking on the + icon!
Clicking on it will automatically add a delay step followed by an automation step. You can modify the delay and add a cancellation event by clicking on the timer button.
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The maximum number of automation steps is 20.
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Point of attention: Be careful of the behavior of the automation in the case of multiple steps. If no parallel automation mechanism applies, and if the trigger happens again for a user already in the automation, it will restart and the user will restart from the beginning. Then, the grace period and the capping will not applied.
*This behavior will evolve shortly to treat this use case better.*
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## Yes/No Split
Set up complex flows in your Automations and split users based on a new targeting rule along the journey!
Imagine different scenario branches based on Profiles conditions and unlock a wide variety of sophisticated and personalized CRM scenarios without losing the simplicity of Batch Dashboard.
The Yes/No Split leverages all Profiles data to split the workflow into 2 branches:
* Yes, people match the condition;
* No, they don’t.
Then, you can send a different message or even a different type depending on whether the user matches or doesn't match the new rule.
*Example: Here the split will depend on whether users are opt-in to marketing emails or not. If they are, they'll get an email. Otherwise, they'll get an SMS message* ✅
### How to use it?
Once you have chosen the trigger event, you can add the Yes/No Split at every step of an omnichannel trigger automation. Click on the + button and then select Yes/No Split:
Then, choose a new segmentation rule to set up the split and give it a name:
It can be through Segments (*more information on user Segments* [*here*](https://help.batch.com/en/articles/9352214-how-to-save-a-user-segment)), or Custom Audiences (*more information on Custom Audiences* [*here*](https://help.batch.com/en/articles/3539787-how-can-i-send-a-test-to-several-devices-at-once)).
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Be aware that entry event information cannot be used as split targeting rules.
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## Random Split
The Random Split allows you to divide the users of an automation into 2 to 4 groups based on algorithms. You may choose the percentage of users entering each group according to your use case and customize everything on the branch such as delays or exit events.
This allows you to test and optimize use cases. Try different series of messages, various delays and times of sending, other content and types of messages. Learn more about use cases in [our Blog's article](https://batch.com/blog/posts/random-split-in-automation-builder) 👈
Let's now see how to create these branches! 💪
### How to use it?
Once you have chosen the trigger event, you can add the Random Split at every step of an omnichannel trigger automation. Click on the + button and then select Random split:
Then customize the branches as you wish! By clicking again on the '+', add messages, delays, exit events or even another split on the branches.
Choose between 2, 3 or 4 branches and adjust the percentage of users of each of them. Just keep in mind that the sum of branches must always be 100%.
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The algorithm for randomization is efficient at high volumes but less at very low volumes. If you send 30 people in the automation for a test and have 3 (33%, 33%, 34% branches) you might not have exactly 10 people by branch.
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## Message
Message editors vary from one channel to another. To learn more about composition, visit the following sections:
## **Run your Trigger Automation**
Now that your trigger automation is ready, you can either run it or keep it as a draft and launch it later 🌟
Once your campaign is live, you can track its performance in the [**Analytics**](https://doc.batch.com/getting-started/features/mobile-engagement-platform/in-app-messaging/analytics) section.
