Triggered sends allow you to automatically send personalized and timely messages to your subscribers. They are sent to an individual subscriber in response to a subscriber action. If you would like to find out more about creating a Triggered Email Message Interaction, check out my other article here.

TriggeredSend object

The TriggeredSend object represents a specific instance of a triggered email send. A typical SOAP envelope consists of the Triggered Send CustomerKey (External Key of the Triggered Email Message Interaction), Subscribers associated with the send and optionally, their Attributes. Here’s an example:

Create a TriggeredSend using WSProxy

WSProxy is a new object for Server-Side JavaScript, introduced by Salesforce in 2018. It acts as a proxy between the Marketing Cloud SOAP Web Service and SSJS. The WSProxy object is native to the platform and simpler to use than the SSJS methods, that’s why it reduces overhead and increases the speed of API calls. WSProxy uses JSON to pass object properties instead of SOAP’s native XML, which makes it much easier to read and write.

To create a new TriggeredSend, we will use the createItem WSProxy function, which has three parameters:

• The first parameter is the object type to perform the action on – here, we will use previously mentioned TriggeredSend object
• The second parameter is a JavaScript object which represents the fields and values to set on the object when created – in below example, we will call it tsDef and use it to define the CustomerKey, Subscribers and optionally, their Attributes
• The third parameter is optional and includes any properties to be set using the SOAP CreateOptions object

Here’s the full script:

In the above script, you will need to provide the Triggered Send External Key and pass an Email Address and Subscriber Key.

If you are using personalization strings in your Triggered Email, you can pass them as name and value pairs in the Attributes object. Here’s an example of passing additional attributes in the WSProxy call:

The results of the call contain three properties from the SOAP CreateResult object: Status, RequestID, and Results. Here’s an example response:

To see how this script works in action, visit the CloudPage that I created and submit your email address here.

Here are additional resources to learn more about Triggered Sends and WSProxy:

• Official documentation on Triggered Emails
• Sending a Triggered Email using AMPscript
• Introducing WSProxy by Eliot Harper