How to trigger a GravityExport Save Feed

A GravityExport Save feed’s Export Trigger decides when it runs. To change it, go to Forms, hover over your form and click Settings, open the GravityExport Save tab and open the feed. On its General tab, choose one of three options under Export Trigger:

• Automatic (on every new entry), the default: the feed exports each time a new entry is submitted.
• Scheduled: the feed runs at a set interval.
• Webhook: the feed runs only when its trigger URL is requested.

Export Trigger applies to feeds whose Export Type is All Entries. A Single Entry feed sends one file for each entry as it is submitted. To run an All Entries feed straight away, whatever its trigger, use Export Now.

Automatic #

New feeds start with this trigger. Each new entry submitted to the form runs the export and sends the result to the feed’s storage destination, with nothing else to set up.

On an All Entries feed, Export on Update is on by default. It also runs the export when an entry is edited, trashed, restored or deleted, or added without a form submission, such as through the Gravity Forms API. For Google Sheets feeds, Export Gravity Forms entries to Google Sheets explains when the sheet is rewritten.

Scheduled #

Choose Scheduled and pick a Schedule Interval. The choices are Every Hour, Twice Daily, Daily, Weekly, Every 30 Days, and Custom, which takes a number of hours. The interval counts from when you save the feed, and the first scheduled run comes one interval later: a Daily feed saved at 10:00 first runs at 10:00 the next day. Saving the feed again starts the count over.

The feed list shows each feed’s Next Run and Last Run, and the feed’s Activity Log tab lists each export with the rows it wrote, or the error that stopped it. Failure Alerts is on by default: when a scheduled export fails, a notice appears on the WordPress Dashboard until the next successful export.

A scheduled feed also has an On-Demand Trigger URL on its General tab. It runs the export whenever it is requested, the same way a webhook does, without changing the schedule. For a full walkthrough, see How to schedule automated exports.

Keeping scheduled exports on time

Scheduled exports run through GravityKit’s background processing, which starts when WordPress cron runs during a site visit or when someone loads an admin page. On a quiet site, or on a site that disables WP-Cron, an export can run later than planned. To keep exports on time, have a cron service request https://example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron (with your own domain) every 5 to 15 minutes. Background processing explains the details.

Webhook #

Choose Webhook and click Save Settings. A Webhook URL then appears below the trigger setting. Click Copy URL to Clipboard to copy it.

Each time the URL is requested, GravityExport runs the export and saves the file as the feed is set up, as long as the feed is active. The page answers “Export finished”, or “Export failed” when the file can’t be saved, so opening the URL in a browser is a quick way to test it.

Anything that can request a URL can run the export:

• An automation platform such as Zapier, Make or n8n, through its webhook or HTTP request step, so an event elsewhere (a payment, a CRM update) can start an export.
• A cron service, for schedules the built-in intervals can’t express. See How to use FastCron to trigger exports on a custom schedule.
• A browser bookmark, to run the export by hand.

A webhook export runs while the request waits and isn’t split into smaller batches, so on a large form it can take a while to answer.