What is a trigger? It starts a workflow without proving completion
Explain event and schedule triggers and distinguish inputs, execution states and business outcomes, including duplicates and recovery.
Understand the concept
A trigger starts a workflow or supplies input through events or schedules. It is not the full processing logic, and successful triggering does not establish correct writes. Define scope, identifiers and allowed actions and handle duplicates or overlapping runs rather than equating run counts with completed work.
Start conditions and execution steps have different roles
Power Automate distinguishes triggers and actions and supports schedules. An event can start parsing that later fails. Delivery and duplicates depend on the source, not trigger names. Scheduled scans need data windows and stable IDs to distinguish new work, repeated notices and unfinished items.
Check inputs and duplicates using test events
Add a public record in an authorized test table, verify fields and simulate duplicate delivery. Check single effects and explicit missing-input states. Query completion before retriggering writes. No automation, schedule or external write was changed here. For time triggers, verify time zones and runs rather than only configured times.
Review conditions after interface or scope changes
Replay filters after source or scope changes and preserve configuration and task states for restart recovery. Count polling, duplicates and manual recovery. Combine timely events with scheduled reconciliation using shared IDs. Delivery means verifiable task completion, not merely a scheduler that launches code.
Checked sources
These sources support the concepts and methods described here. Examples and test scope are labeled separately; check the version of the tools you use.