> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.heyy.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Trigger an automation

> Let your employee start another automation for the contact, with input parameters.

**Trigger automation** is the second [action](/help/ai-employees/capabilities/actions-overview) type. It lets the employee kick off an existing [automation](/help/automations/index) mid-conversation — useful for internal notifications, assigning a chat to a teammate, or starting a workflow your main automation does not handle inline.

## Add the action

1. On the **Actions** tab, click **Add action** and choose **Trigger automation**.
2. Provide an **action name**.
3. Add any input parameters the target automation expects, the same way you would for a [Custom API action](/help/ai-employees/capabilities/call-an-external-api#build-the-action) — friendly name, type, description, required toggle.
4. Select the specific automation this action should fire.
5. Save.

Input parameters do not always need to come from the customer typing something in. The employee can fill them from three sources:

| Source                              | Example                                                                                                                              |
| ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **The conversation history itself** | The customer already mentioned their order number earlier in the thread.                                                             |
| **The output of a previous action** | An earlier [Custom API call](/help/ai-employees/capabilities/call-an-external-api) already returned the value this automation needs. |
| **Asking the customer directly**    | The employee asks a specific question to gather what is missing before it can call the action.                                       |

For example, if the employee captures a customer's email mid-conversation, it can feed that value directly into the triggered automation as a live input, without any manual step from your team.

<Frame>
  <img src="https://mintlify.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/heyy-c8bd5c9e/assets/ai-employees-actions-trigger-automation.png" alt="Trigger automation action" />
</Frame>

## Common uses

| Use case              | What it does                                                                                               |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Internal notification | Notify a team or teammate the moment a specific situation comes up mid-chat.                               |
| Assign a chat         | Hand a conversation to a specific teammate or team without waiting for an exit point to close it out.      |
| Follow-up workflow    | Start a separate journey — a nurture sequence, a fulfillment process — without blocking the current reply. |

Reference this action in a [guideline](/help/ai-employees/identity-and-guidelines/write-your-guidelines) with `@Actions` so the employee knows exactly when to invoke it. Test the trigger path in the [Playground](/help/ai-employees/going-live/test-in-playground) and confirm the target automation is published and appropriate for the current channel before going live.