TL;DR: Triggers in Thrive Apprentice
New in Thrive Apprentice: your courses can now act on their own at the moments that matter in a student's journey. When a student gets access, loses it, finishes a course, module or lesson, or reaches a drip lesson, Thrive Apprentice can tag them in your email tool, send their details to another app, start or stop a Thrive Ultimatum countdown, or unlock their next course.
3 things worth knowing:
- Finish one course, unlock the next: students move on to your next course without having to ask you.
- Your email list keeps up with your courses: tag students when they finish a course or leave, so the right email sequence picks them up.
- Everything lives on one page: set up, pause and check every automation in one place, with an optional delay or condition on each.
Expecting a wave of new students from your Black Friday sale? This one's worth a few minutes before they arrive.
Black Friday week brings a rush of new students into your courses. Over the weeks that follow, they'll finish lessons, finish courses and reach the next lesson in your drip schedule, and each of those moments is a chance to cheer them on, send the right email or offer them the next step. The catch is that those moments happen at all hours, one student at a time, and keeping up with them by hand gets old fast.
Until now, acting on those moments took Thrive Automator or another automation tool.
So I'm excited to share this one: Thrive Apprentice can now act on those moments itself, with Triggers.
You decide once what should happen when a student finishes a course, reaches a lesson or leaves, and Thrive Apprentice takes care of it for every student after that. So if you want your Black Friday students to keep moving through your courses long after the sale, you'll love this one. Here's what it opens up.
Your Courses Can Now Respond to Your Students
Thrive Apprentice already knows where each student is, from every lesson they finish to every course they complete. Now it can do something with that, right inside the plugin you already use, with no separate automation tool to set up.
Here's what that puts in your hands:
Students move up without asking: finishing one course can unlock the next, so nobody waits on you to let them in.
Your email list matches your courses: students can be tagged in your email tool when they finish a course, reach a lesson or leave, so the right sequence picks them up.
Offers land while interest is highest: a Thrive Ultimatum countdown can start the moment a student finishes a course, so your next offer reaches them right after a win.
Urgency stops when it no longer applies: when a student's access ends, their running countdown can stop too.
Your other tools stay in the loop: a webhook can send the student's details to your CRM, a spreadsheet or anything else that accepts one.
Put together, the work that comes after the sale runs itself, one student at a time.
What One Course Looks Like Now
The easiest way to show you what this changes is to follow one student through it. On a demo site, we gave a free four-week strength course a follow-up course called Strength Builder, and told Thrive Apprentice what to do when a student finishes the first one. Then our test student, Jordan, finished it. Here's what happened, from both sides.
What you set up once: on the Triggers page, the 4-Week Strength Starter course has two automations saved together. One grants Strength Builder as soon as a student finishes, and the other starts a seven-day member offer two days later.
What Jordan gets: the moment they finish the last lesson, Strength Builder opens in their account, so they can start the first lesson straight away without asking anyone to let them in. Their course list now shows the Starter as finished and Strength Builder under way.
What you see: the Activity Log shows the course grant as Fired the moment Jordan finished, and the member offer as Scheduled, with the date it will start.
All of that came from two automations set up once, and they'll do the same for every student who finishes the course. Now for the bigger picture, because unlocking a course is only one of the things Triggers can do.
Four Moments, Four Things Thrive Apprentice Can Do
Every automation pairs a moment in a student's journey with something Thrive Apprentice does next. Here are the four moments it can watch for:
Trigger
When a student receives access
When it runs
A student gets access to a product, for example through a form, a webhook or a manual grant
You can narrow it to
One product
Trigger
When access is revoked
When it runs
A student loses access, for example when you remove it, a form or webhook removes it, or a WooCommerce order is refunded or cancelled
You can narrow it to
One product
Trigger
When a student completes content
When it runs
A student finishes a course, a module or a lesson
You can narrow it to
A course, module or lesson
Trigger
When drip content unlocks
When it runs
A drip campaign opens a lesson, module or chapter for a student
You can narrow it to
A course, then the module, chapter or lesson
And here's what Thrive Apprentice can do when one of those moments happens:
Action
Apply email tag
What it does
Adds one or more tags to the student in your connected email service
Action
Send webhook
What it does
Sends the student and event details to any URL, such as Zapier, Make or your CRM
Action
Start or stop an Ultimatum campaign
What it does
Starts a Thrive Ultimatum countdown for the student, or ends one that's running
Action
Grant Apprentice access
What it does
Unlocks a different Thrive Apprentice product, like your next course. It isn't offered when access is revoked.
Each product or piece of content can have one of each type of action, with one exception: Apply email tag and Send webhook share a slot, so it's one or the other.
That gives you a lot to work with. You can unlock your next course a week after someone finishes the first, or tag students who reach the halfway lesson of a drip course so your email tool can check in on them. When someone's access ends, you can tag them for your winback sequence and start a winback countdown, or stop the countdown that was running.
Between them, the four moments and four actions cover a student's whole journey with you, from the day they join to the day they finish, or move on.
Set It Up in a Few Clicks
It all happens in your Thrive Apprentice settings, with no code and no other plugin to open. Here's the whole setup:
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Thrive Dashboard » Thrive Apprentice, open Settings and click Triggers. Then click the card for the moment you want to act on.
- Click Add automation and choose what it watches: a product for the access triggers, a completion level (Course, Module or Lesson) and the exact item for the completion trigger, or a course and the item its drip campaign unlocks for the drip trigger.
- Under What should happen?, pick an action, then click Continue. Anything you've already added for the same item shows an Added label.
- Fill in the action: the tags, the webhook URL (with Send test request to check it), Start campaign or Stop campaign and the campaign, or the Apprentice product to grant.
- If you'd like, open Advanced settings to add a time delay or a condition (more on those below).
- Click Save & activate. The automation starts running right away.
Connect your email service first.
The Apply email tag action needs an email service that supports tags, connected under Thrive Dashboard » API Connections. Until then, its card stays locked.
From then on, every student who reaches that moment gets the next step you planned, even on your busiest days.
For every setting in one place, check out How to Use Triggers in Thrive Apprentice in our Knowledge Base.
Make It Wait, or Make It Choose
Some follow-ups land better a few days later, and some only make sense for certain students. Two optional settings under Advanced settings handle both, and until you switch one on, the action runs as soon as the moment happens.
Time delay: switch on Time delay, enter a number and pick the unit, from minutes to months after the event. That's how you'd unlock a bonus course three days after someone joins, or start an offer a week after they finish.
Add a condition: switch on Add a condition, pick a field, choose equals, does not equal or contains, and type the value. For the access triggers, you can check the student's email, their student ID, the source, the product name or the product ID.
For example, if you also teach a company's team, a condition on the student's email can send only that team's students to the company's CRM with a webhook.
So one course can treat different students differently, and every follow-up arrives when it makes sense.
Everything That Runs, on One Page
If you've ever wondered what happens when someone finishes a particular course, you can now see it all in one place. That's handy when you run several courses, and even more so for agencies reviewing a client's site before changing anything.
So before you change a course, you can see everything that depends on it.
See What Happened for Every Student
When a student asks why the next course hasn't shown up, you don't have to guess. On any trigger's page, click All logs to open the Activity Log.
That turns "where's my next course?" into a quick look you can do yourself.
For what each outcome means, see the Activity Log section of How to Use Triggers in Thrive Apprentice.
Smart Defaults That Keep Things Tidy
An automation that hands out courses and starts offers has to behave when real students use it. These are handled for you, so you can switch one on and trust it:
Who Benefits Most From Triggers
If you teach with Thrive Apprentice, Triggers is ready for you as soon as you update. Here are a few examples of who will feel the difference first, and what it could look like for them:
Course creators with more than one course: finishing your beginner course can unlock the intermediate one, a week later if you like, so the students who joined in your Black Friday sale keep moving up without asking.
Creators who run email sequences: students are tagged when they finish a course or reach a key lesson, so your email list always knows where they are and the right sequence picks them up.
Membership owners running offers and winbacks: a Thrive Ultimatum countdown can start when a student finishes a course, and a winback offer can start when their access ends.
Agencies managing client sites: every Thrive Apprentice automation for a course sits on one page, so you can review it before you change anything.
Triggers FAQs
Here are quick answers to a few questions you might have before you add your first automation.
Does a trigger run when I grant access to a student by hand?
Yes. The access triggers run the same way however a student got access, including a manual grant from your dashboard, a form or a webhook.
Do I still need Thrive Automator for this?
For these jobs, no. Tagging students, sending webhooks, starting or stopping countdowns and unlocking the next course can all be set up right in Thrive Apprentice now.
Why can't I pick the Apply email tag action?
It stays locked until an email service that supports tags is connected under Thrive Dashboard » API Connections. It also shows as taken when the same item already has a Send webhook action, because the two share one slot.
Why isn't my course in the drip trigger's list?
The drip trigger only lists courses whose drip campaign unlocks content for each student, after purchase or after their first lesson. Campaigns that unlock content on fixed dates for everyone don't appear.
Does a completion trigger run again if a student retakes a course?
No. Each automation runs once per student for the same course, module or lesson, even if their progress is reset.
Turn On Triggers Today
If your Thrive plugins are up to date, Triggers is already waiting in your Thrive Apprentice settings.
- Update your Thrive plugins from your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Thrive Dashboard » Thrive Apprentice » Settings » Triggers.
- Pick a card, click Add automation and choose what should happen.
Then set up one automation before your Black Friday sale starts, and let your first course hand every student who finishes it to the next one. When you see their email next to Fired in the Activity Log, that's one less thing on your list for every student who follows.
Triggers also picks up where Thrive Actions and Incoming Webhooks leave off: those bring students into your courses, and Triggers looks after what happens once they're there.
We have more announcements coming, so stay tuned.
We're always working to make Thrive Suite a better platform for your business, and updates like these are exactly how we do it — one well-built improvement at a time.
— Angie & The Thrive Themes Team
P.S. Don't have Thrive Suite yet? If you'd love your courses to look after your students' next steps on their own, join here and come join the fun.
