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Triggers overview

This topic provides an overview of triggers in Harness. Harness uses triggers as a core component to automate and streamline deployment workflows. Triggers help you automate the execution of your pipelines based on some event like a new artifact/manifest, or run on a schedule or an external webhook. Triggers offer a versatile and dynamic approach to initiating processes based on specific events, changes, or conditions in pipelines.

Types of triggers​

There are four trigger types in Harness:

Webhook triggers​

You can trigger pipelines in response to Git events that match specific payload conditions you set up in a Harness trigger. For example, when a pull request or push event occurs on a Git repo and your trigger settings match the payload conditions, a CI or CD pipeline can run.

important

RBAC doesn't apply to Webhook triggers as the events occur on the repository side.

Triggers enable event-driven CI/CD and support the practice of every commit building and/or deploying to a target environment.

Harness supports the following SCM providers:

  • GitHub
  • GitLab
  • Harness code
  • Bitbucket
  • Azure Repos
  • Custom

Artifact triggers​

note

Currently, this feature is behind the feature flag CD_TRIGGERS_REFACTOR. Contact Harness Support to enable the feature.

You can set up Harness pipelines to be triggered automatically when a new version of an artifact is added to a registry. For instance, if a new Docker image is uploaded to your Docker Hub account, it can trigger a CD pipeline that automatically deploys the image.

Supported artifact providers for artifact triggers​

You can use the following artifact providers to triggers pipelines:

  • ACR (Azure Container Registry)
  • Amazon S3
  • Artifactory Registry
  • Bamboo
  • Custom Artifact
  • Docker Registry
  • ECR (Amazon Elastic Container Registry)
  • GCR (Google Container Registry)
  • Github Package Registry
  • Google Artifact Registry
  • Google Cloud Storage
note

The following artifact providers are supported behind the feature flag CD_TRIGGER_V2:

  • Jenkins
  • Azure Artifacts
  • Nexus3 Registry
  • Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Contact Harness Support to enable the feature.

Manifest triggers​

Helm chart triggers simply listen to the repo where one or more of the Helm charts in your pipeline are hosted. You can set conditions on the triggers, such as matching one or more chart versions. This trigger type is a simple way to automate deployments for new Helm charts.

Scheduled triggers​

With scheduled triggers, you can automate pipeline executions by setting up Cron-based triggers. This allows you to schedule the pipelines to run at specific times and intervals, making your workflow more efficient and reliable.

Add a trigger to a pipeline​

To add a trigger to a pipeline, do the following:

  1. Open your Harness pipeline in Pipeline Studio.
  2. Select Triggers.
  3. Select + New Trigger or Add New Trigger. The Triggers pane opens.
  4. Select the Webhook, Artifact, Manifest, or Scheduled trigger.
  5. Complete the required fields for your trigger type. For steps on setting up different types of triggers, go to the Triggers documentation.