Trigger – Birthday/Annual Trigger

The Birthday/Annual Trigger will start a Flow based on any date field recorded for a person and will be repeated every 12 months on the same date and time.

Note that:

• The trigger works only with "Date and time" fields.
• The trigger works with dates and a time. If you only send the date to a "Date and time" field, Encharge will automatically record the time as 00:00 on that date.
• The step can be triggered multiple times for the same person. For instance, let's say the step is set to trigger for a date and time field named  "Annual Renewal". The step for John gets triggered on 10 Sep at 05:00 PM. Later that day you change the "Annual Renewal" date for John to 12 Sep 05:00 PM. In that case, Encharge will trigger the step again on 12 Sep.
• This step works exactly like the Date Field Trigger step except it gets triggered every 12 months.

To set up the step select when to trigger it. There are 2 options:

• On – exactly when the date and time from the field is.
• Before – days, business days, or hours before the date and time from the field.
• After – days, business days, or hours after the date and time from the field. 

Note that it's not possible to select increments smaller than 1 hour. 

Business days are all days from the week without Saturday and Sunday.

Next, choose the "Date and time" field. Encharge will only show you "Date and time" fields in the dropdown and you won't be able to select any other type of field:

That's it, the flow will be triggered at this exact date and time, every 12 months.

Advanced Options

Specify trigger time

Use this to overwrite the time in the field. Triggers in contact’s timezone if available, or in your account's timezone otherwise. For instance, if you want to send the birthday email at exactly 9 AM. 

Note that it's only possible to select intervals of 15 minutes. The time picker will round up your time to the closes interval – for example, if you select 09:11 AM it will record it as 09:15 AM.

Further reading: How to Send Automated Birthday Emails With Ease - In-depth guide on using the Birthday/Annual Trigger.

Common Questions

What happens if the Flow is turned off the time in the "Date and time" field passes?

If your Flow is paused, or for some reason, Encharge is down or there's a delay in the service, the time in the step might pass for one or more people without the step being triggered at the exact time.

Encharge has an automated grace period of 1 hour. Meaning that in those cases Encharge will wait up to 1 hour after the time has passed and retry to trigger the step. For instance, if the time in the field is set to 04:00 PM for John but you activate your Flow at 04:15 PM, the step will still be triggered for him because the time is within the 1 hour grace period. So John will step enter the step and the Flow, even though 15 minutes later than originally intended.