Automation triggers and actions

Automations let InfraNest react on its own to things happening in your infrastructure — this article covers every event it can watch for, how to narrow down when a rule runs, and everything it can do in response. It's written for anyone setting up or adjusting an automation, no technical background required.

#Overview

• Triggers are the events that start a rule — a domain expiring, a monitor going down, a certificate problem, and more.
• Conditions narrow things down, so a rule only runs when the event's details match what you care about.
• Actions are what the rule actually does — send a notification, open a maintenance window, update DNS, and so on.
• You can combine one trigger, any number of conditions, and one or more actions into a single automation.

#Choose a trigger

1. Start a New automation and pick On event.
2. Choose the event that should start the rule. The options are grouped by area:
   • Domains: Domain added, Domain expiring, Domain status changed, Domain renewed, Domain deleted.
   • DNS: DNS drift detected (a zone's records change), DNS record changed (in-app), DNS record deleted — covering both InfraNest and your DNS provider, one record at a time.
   • Servers: Server added, Server status changed (covers power on/off, reboot, rebuild, snapshot taken), Server removed.
   • Monitoring and incidents: Monitor alert, Incident opened, Incident resolved, Incident acknowledged, Incident note added, Incident status update posted — for the last one, use the Where it was done condition to only react to updates posted from a particular place like Slack.
   • Certificates: Certificate expiring, Certificate expired, Certificate changed, Weak certificate, Unexpected certificate, Renewal has not reached an address — this one fires once per address; pair it with Wait and a check so you're only told about the addresses still behind.
   • Maintenance: Maintenance scheduled, Maintenance started, Maintenance completed.
   • Drop Catch: Watched domain dropping soon, Watched domain available, Watched domain registered, Watched-domain registration failed.
   • Dynamic IPs and Status Pages: Dynamic IP changed, Status-page subscriber added.
3. Save your choice and move on to Add condition if you want to narrow things down, or go straight to Add action.

#Narrow a rule with conditions

1. In the automation editor, select Add condition.
2. Choose the Field you want to check — for example Days left, Monitor status now, a record's type, or Tags.
3. Pick an Operator, such as equals, contains, greater than, or is one of.
4. Enter the Value to compare against — for instance, fewer than 7 days left, or a status of Failing.
5. Use Add group if you need several conditions together, and choose Match with Any or All to control how they combine.
6. Leave conditions empty if you want the rule to run on every matching event.

TipConditions are optional — if you skip this step, the rule fires on every event that matches the trigger.

#Add actions

1. Select Add action, then Choose an action… from the list.
2. For notifying people, pick from Send notification, Post under the incident's alert, Message a person, Call webhook, Add issue labels, or Remove issue label.
3. For monitoring and incidents, choose Start monitoring, Monitor the new website, Monitor the new server, Acknowledge incident, or Resolve incident. Note that Monitor the new website and Monitor the new server only add a monitor while your plan has room for one, so nothing existing ever gets paused.
4. For maintenance and status updates, pick Open maintenance window, Complete maintenance, or Post status-page announcement. A maintenance window stays internal unless you fill in its public notice field, which is what your status pages display while it runs.
5. For domains, DNS and certificates, choose from Set nameservers, Set auto-renew, Create DNS zone, Apply DNS template, Link certificate, or Stop tracking address — the last one only applies once nothing in your DNS answers for that address any more.
6. For integrations, select Sync integrations.
7. Repeat Add action to chain more than one action onto the same rule, then select Save automation.

NoteYou can run any automation set to Manually straight from chat: type /infranest run in Slack or /run to the Telegram bot, optionally with part of the automation's name. Pick one, confirm, and it runs as you, using your role — the result is posted back to the same chat.

#Troubleshooting

• Rule isn't firing — double check your conditions aren't excluding every real event; try removing them temporarily and use Test run to confirm the trigger itself is working.
• Action didn't do anything — some actions, like Monitor the new website, silently skip if your plan has no room left; check your plan limits under Settings.
• Automation got switched off — look for Switched off after repeated failures; open the automation's Runs tab to see what failed before turning it back On.