Custom triggers#
Custom triggers watch your shipments over time and raise a hand when something takes too long — an order created but not fulfilled for six days, a parcel sitting in transit for a week. When a shipment has been stuck in a state you chose for longer than your threshold, the trigger fires an event into Klaviyo, where you build the follow-up flow.
In the Karla Portal, go to Notify → Custom triggers.
Email flows are the content of emails Karla itself sends. Custom triggers don't send any email — each one delivers a metric into Klaviyo when its time condition is met, and your Klaviyo flow decides what happens next. Custom triggers are currently only available for Klaviyo; native Notify support is coming soon.
Prerequisites#
- A connected Klaviyo integration. Without one, the page shows a Connect Klaviyo first prompt that links you to the integration settings.
- The editor role (or above) in the portal to create or delete triggers.
How a trigger works#
- A trigger watches shipments in the events or phases you select. Karla periodically evaluates your triggers against your recent shipments.
- When a shipment has been stuck longer than the time threshold, Karla sends
an event to Klaviyo under the metric
karla_<trigger_name>_internal_trigger. - Threshold hours skip Sundays and German public holidays — a 144-hour threshold reaches further back than six calendar days when a Sunday or holiday falls in between.
- Only shipments created in the last 30 days are checked.
- A trigger fires at most once per order — once it has fired, it stays quiet for that order's shipments.
Create a trigger#
Click Create new trigger. The form reminds you that custom triggers currently work with Klaviyo-powered stores, then asks for:
Trigger name#
Names both the trigger and its Klaviyo metric. The recommended format is
order_status_condition_timeframe, for example
order_created_not_fulfilled_6_days. Spaces and special characters convert
to underscores automatically, and the final name is lowercase. That example
produces the Klaviyo metric
karla_order_created_not_fulfilled_6_days_internal_trigger.
Events#
Pick individual events, or select a whole phase — phases automatically include new carrier events added to them later. The picker groups events under the shipment phases: Order created, Order processed, Order cancelled, Collect, In transit, In delivery, Delivered, Delivery failed, Return created, Return transit, Return received, Return failed, and Returned. See the shipment events reference for what each phase covers.
Time threshold type#
When should the timer start?
| Option | The timer counts from |
|---|---|
| After latest update (default) | The shipment's most recent event |
| From creation | The moment the shipment was created |
Set time threshold (hours)#
How long the shipment must be stuck before the trigger fires. Whole hours only, from 1 to 600 (25 days); the default is 144 (6 days). For thresholds of 480 hours or more the portal shows a heads-up: since only the last 30 days of shipments are checked, very high thresholds leave little room to match.
As you fill in the form, a live preview spells out exactly what will fire — for example: "Shipments stuck in any In transit state since before Tue, Aug 4 at 09:00 will fire this trigger — that's 144 hours back, skipping Sundays and German public holidays."
Click Create Trigger to save. The trigger is live immediately.
Find the metric in Klaviyo#
As soon as you create a trigger, Karla seeds its metric with a single test event so it shows up in Klaviyo right away — Klaviyo only offers a metric to flow builders after receiving at least one event of it, so you don't have to wait for a real shipment to match.
In Klaviyo, create a flow triggered by the metric
karla_<trigger_name>_internal_trigger and build your follow-up — an apology
email, a support ticket, an internal alert. See
Building Klaviyo flows
for the general pattern.
Manage your triggers#
The Your triggers list shows every trigger, with a search box to filter:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Trigger name | The slugified name, as it appears in the Klaviyo metric |
| Watching | The selected events or phases ("3 events", "2 phases", "Any event"), any excluded events, and a Return chip for return shipments |
| Threshold | The time threshold (e.g. "6 days") and its type |
Click a trigger to open its details:
- The conditions — event type, events or phases, exceptions, and threshold type — are read-only.
- Only Set time threshold (hours) can be edited and saved.
- To change anything else, open More actions → Duplicate trigger, which prefills the create form with the trigger's conditions — adjust them, save the new trigger, then delete the old one.
- Delete removes the trigger permanently; this cannot be undone. There is no enable/disable switch — a trigger fires as long as it exists.