Filters And Conditions

A filter decides whether something proceeds. Zapify has three places to put one, and they are not interchangeable — picking the right one changes what gets recorded, what gets logged, and whether a multi-trigger automation still works.

Filtering the trigger is free. Conditions on an automation or on an action are a Pro feature, as are nested groups and pattern or date comparisons.

The three places

On a trigger — "Only react if"

Sits on the trigger card. Decides whether this firing counts at all.

If it does not pass, nothing is recorded: no completion, no run, and no log entry by default. That last point is deliberate — a trigger filter runs on every firing of its hook, and not matching is the ordinary case rather than a fault. Logging every miss would bury the log in noise.

Use it for questions about the event itself: is this the right post type? the right form? the right order status?

On the automation — "Only continue if"

Sits between the triggers and the actions. Every trigger has fired and the automation is about to run; this decides whether it does.

If it does not pass, the run is recorded as skipped, with the reason.

Use it for questions about the user or the site rather than the event: does this person already have the role? is it a weekday?

On an action — "Run this action only if"

Sits on the action. Decides whether that one step runs, while the rest of the automation carries on.

Use it when most of the automation applies but one step should not always happen.

Which one to use

For a simple automation with one trigger, the trigger filter and the automation filter produce the same outcome. The difference shows up in two places:

Log volume. Filtering at the automation level writes a skipped run every time. On a busy hook such as "a post is updated", that is a row for every post anybody saves.

Multi-trigger automations. If your automation waits for two triggers, or for the same trigger a set number of times, the trigger filter decides which firings count towards that tally. The automation filter cannot — by the time it runs, the tally is already spent, and a skip throws it away.

So: filter the event on the trigger, and filter the decision on the automation.

AND, OR and groups

Conditions combine with and or or, shown between the rows and switchable by clicking. A group nests inside its parent and is labelled by what it means — all of these or any of these — rather than by the word "group".

role is editor and (total over 100 or first order) is two rows, the second being a group.

Unfinished conditions

A condition with nothing to compare — a row added and never filled in — stops the automation entirely. This is deliberate: a condition Zapify cannot evaluate must not silently pass.

Because it is deliberate, Zapify will not let you set an automation live while one exists, and says where it is. If you find an automation doing nothing, this is the first thing to check.