In today's digital landscape, no application is an island. Your business relies on a complex ecosystem of specialized services: Stripe for payments, GitHub for code, Salesforce for customer data, and Slack for communication. Each of these platforms generates a constant stream of valuable events. But how do you harness these signals and turn them into coordinated, automated actions?
The answer lies in mastering event-driven architecture, and a cornerstone of that architecture is the humble webhook. When combined with a powerful platform like trigger.do, webhooks transform from simple notifications into robust event-driven triggers for all your business automation needs.
Think of a standard API call as you asking a service for information. You have to repeatedly poll an endpoint to check if something new has happened. It's inefficient and slow.
A webhook flips that model on its head.
A webhook is an automated message sent from an app when something happens. It’s a simple, real-time "push" notification sent to a unique URL you provide. Instead of you constantly asking, "Is it done yet?", the service tells you, "It's done now!" the moment the event occurs.
Major services you use every day are built around them:
These signals are the lifeblood of a connected business, but receiving them is only half the battle. The real power comes from what you do with them.
Receiving raw webhooks comes with hidden complexity. You need to build, host, and maintain a server endpoint to listen for them. You have to handle security, potential retries, and then write all the boilerplate code to process the incoming data before you can even get to the core business logic.
This is where trigger.do shines. It acts as the central nervous system for your workflow automation.
Instead of pointing a Stripe webhook at your own custom server, you point it at a stable, secure endpoint provided by trigger.do. That webhook immediately becomes a trigger that executes a workflow you've defined as code.
This approach offers three transformative benefits:
With trigger.do, you can connect any webhook to any workflow. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
While this post focuses on webhooks, the beauty of trigger.do is that the trigger mechanism is interchangeable. Whether it's a webhook from a third party or a direct API trigger from your own backend, it runs the same, robust workflow code you've already defined.
Here's what the code for that new-user-onboarding workflow might look like. You write this logic once, and trigger.do takes care of executing it in response to an event.
import { Do } from '@do-sdk/client';
const client = new Do({ apiKey: process.env.DO_API_KEY });
// This function represents the logic of your workflow.
// It can be triggered by an API call, a webhook, or a schedule.
async function onboardNewUser(user: { id: string; email: string; }) {
try {
const { workflowRunId } = await client.trigger('new-user-onboarding', {
payload: {
userId: user.id,
email: user.email,
plan: 'premium',
},
});
console.log(`Workflow ${workflowRunId} triggered successfully.`);
return { success: true, workflowRunId };
} catch (error) {
console.error('Failed to trigger workflow:', error);
return { success: false, error };
}
}
// In your application's signup logic, you would call this function.
onboardNewUser({ id: 'usr_abc123', email: 'jane.doe@example.com' });
When a webhook from your CRM hits a trigger.do endpoint configured for this workflow, the platform passes the webhook's payload to your code, initiating the exact same process.
Stop building brittle, point-to-point integrations and managing endless boilerplate code. Start thinking in terms of events and workflows. Webhooks provide the signals, and trigger.do provides the engine to turn those signals into powerful business automation.
By connecting your tools to a central workflow platform, you can build a responsive, resilient, and scalable business operating system.
Ready to connect your ecosystem? Visit trigger.do to define your business logic once and trigger it from anywhere.