What signals are

A signal is something happening that a case might need to react to. Signals fire workflow steps.

Where they come from

Inbound correspondence. An email arriving on a connected inbox.

Time. A deadline approaching or passing, or a case sitting untouched for a set period.

Documents. A document of a particular type arriving on a case.

Connected systems. A change in a system you have integrated — a payment clearing, a record updating, a status changing.

Cases themselves. A stage change, a reassignment, a closure.

Using one

Signals do nothing alone. They are the trigger half of a workflow step, so the pattern is always:

When [signal], do [action], optionally gated by [approver].

For example: when a document of type Medical report arrives, move the case to stage three and notify the owner.

Seeing what fired

Signals → Activity lists everything that fired in the last thirty days, what it matched, and which workflow steps it triggered — including signals that matched nothing, which is usually what you want when something did not happen and should have.

Rate limits

A signal that would fire more than fifty times in a minute for one case is throttled and logged. This protects against a loop — a workflow step that sends correspondence, which arrives on the same inbox, which fires the signal again.