External events are how programs and campaigns in Emarsys can be linked to external triggers. They can be associated with actions outside Emarsys, and can then be used to add contacts to an automated program or trigger mobile or email campaigns to them.
External Events page
External events are listed on the Management > External Events page.
You can search for an external event by entering its ID or name into the Search field.
Here you can:
- Create an external event by clicking Create External Event.
- Delete an external event by clicking the Delete icon.
- Delete multiple external events as follows:
1. Select the checkbox next to the external event you wish to remove.
2. After selecting an external event, you can select multiple ones or clear your selection by clicking the checkbox icon.
3. After selecting the external events, click Delete Selected. A popup window will appear informing you which of the selected events can be deleted. To check the blocking issues, click the > icon next to it.
4. You can resolve the blocker issues by clicking the Edit icon next to them.
While you are working on other tabs to remove blockers, the dialog displaying the blocking issues is automatically refreshed, so you can delete the ones where you resolved the blocking issues without reloading this dialog.
5. Click Delete External Events to remove the selected events.
Notes:
- You can only click Delete External Events when there is at least one event without blocking issues.
- You can see how many events will be deleted next to the Delete External Events button.
- After clicking Delete External Events, those events that could not be deleted because of the blocking issues will still be selected.
Creating an external event
You can create an external event in the following ways:
- Via the Management menu, External Events.
- By using the Creating an external event API endpoint.
- Via the Triggered Email interface.
You create the external event by simply giving it a name. Emarsys then assigns it an ID which you can retrieve using the Querying Available External Events endpoint.
Renaming an external event
Using external events in Interactions
To add contacts to an automated program via an external event, simply create a program with the trigger External event and select the appropriate event from the list.
When the program is launched, all contacts who interact with the trigger associated with this event will automatically be added to the program.
If you include external data (such as purchase details) in the external event API call, this data will be stored by Emarsys while the contact is in the program, and can be used to make decisions based on the attributes (Decision node - Trigger attributes template) or attributes of previous events (Decision node - Event happened template) and you can also use the attributes to personalize your content.
Using external events with the API
The Emarsys API has the following endpoints for managing external events:
Using external events with third-party integrations
If you are using one of the Emarsys integrations, your external events will be available for selection in the integration platform, usually when you are setting up your transactional email campaigns.