Automation
A pipeline you have to start by hand is a demo. Automation is what turns it into an integration that runs without anyone watching.
There are three ways to start a pipeline without pressing the button yourself, and they answer different questions.
| Page | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Trigger Buttons | A person should start the run, but from where they already are — a button on a form, a menu item, or a file upload |
| Cron Jobs | The run should happen on a schedule, whether or not anyone is around |
The third way is not on a schedule at all: an external system can call the pipeline directly over HTTP. That is covered under Start and Stop Workers, together with how to authorise those endpoints.
Odoo can also fire a pipeline when a record changes — on an ORM method call or a
field write — via the zbsync_trigger_methods module. See
Starting a Pipeline.
Before you automate
Run the pipeline by hand until it is boring. An automated pipeline fails silently unless someone is looking at the dashboard, so make sure you can answer two questions first:
- How will you know it failed? See The Dashboard.
- What happens when it runs twice, or on data it has already processed? Keeping Data Throughout a Pipeline covers the state that makes incremental runs work.