Create Custom Trigger Words

Can I create custom alerts for a specific activity, word, or phrase?

Yes, you can!

Accountable2You maintains a massive (and always growing) list of questionable words and phrases that produce alerts with no action needed on your part.

But let’s say you have a unique scenario where you’d like to customize your alerts. Good news! Your account comes with the Custom Trigger Words feature, where you can set specific words and phrases to Highly Questionable, Questionable, Reduced, or Ignore.

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Understand the Custom Trigger Words Rating System

You have four options to either increase or decrease the likelihood that a Custom Trigger Word will create an alert, outlined below:

• Highly Questionable: Sends Partners an Instant Text Alert, Email Alert, and triggers a red alert 🔴 in the reports.
• Questionable: Sends Partners an Email Alert and triggers a yellow alert 🟡 in the reports.
• Reduced: Reduces the default impact of a word in our list.
• Ignore: Will not trigger any alerts for that specific word/phrase.

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How to access the Custom Trigger Words list

1

Log in to your A2U account online here.

2

Click your profile icon and select Account Settings.

3

Select Trigger Words from the Account Settings menu.

Family and Organization Plans:

1

Log in to your online A2U account here and then choose the appropriate option below:

• For Family Plans, navigate to the Family tab.
• For Organization Plans, navigate to the Manage Organization tab, then select Manage Users from the menu on the left.

2

Select Options > Trigger Words next to the user for whom you’d like to add or edit Trigger Words.

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How to add or edit Custom Trigger Words

1

Add the text or phrase you’d like to produce an alert for (or to reduce alerts for) exactly as it’s spelled, or as you’ve seen it formatted in prior accountability reports (if applicable). The entries are not case-sensitive, but spaces and punctuation must match to flag correctly. ( Note: No quotation marks are needed.)

2

Choose a rating adjustment, based on how you'd like Accountable2You to handle the word or phrase. ( Note: It will take about an hour for the changes to update.)

3

Select Add to List to finish creating your Custom Trigger Word.

4

To edit an existing Trigger Word once created, just click Options > Edit to make any needed changes. You can also click Options > Remove next to an existing Trigger Word to delete it from your account.

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When should I add a questionable word to my Custom Trigger Words list?

This is a tough question because the answer varies based on your specific needs. The general best practice is to only add words or phrases when you see questionable activity in the Accountability Report that did not produce an alert.

While we can’t address every scenario here, the following questions and answers should provide some guidance:

I can think of a bunch of bad words and objectionable phrases. I don’t want the user searching or looking at content that contains those words, so should I add them all to the Trigger Word list?

No - As mentioned above, Accountable2You maintains a massive (and ever-increasing) list of questionable words and phrases. By manually adding words and phrases, you may inadvertently create “false positives” on the Accountability Report.

The word “______” doesn’t create an alert, but I can see on the Accountability Report that the user is browsing inappropriate websites that all contain this same word. Should I add it to the Trigger Words list?

           Yes - This is an excellent example of how to use the Custom Trigger Words list.

The word “_____” creates an alert on the report, but not always—or sometimes it’s only marked as “Questionable” instead of “Highly Questionable.” For this user, it should always be “Highly Questionable.“ Should I add it to the Custom Trigger Words list?

           Yes - This is also a great example of how to use the Custom Trigger Words list.

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This one is a little easier to answer. If a specific activity is creating alerts unnecessarily, you can add a word or phrase from that recurring alert as Reduced or Ignore to prevent these "false positives" from appearing.

Adding a word to the Trigger Words list will generate an alert to that user’s accountability partners, informing them of the changes.

For example, let’s say that you use Mozilla Thunderbird as your email app on your computer. But every time you merely open the Mozilla Thunderbird application to read email, it seems to create an unnecessary alert to your accountability partners. In this case, you could add "Mozilla Thunderbird" to your Trigger Word list and set it to Ignore. The words "Mozilla" and "Thunderbird" would still produce an alert when captured separately (if they were questionable), but the exact phrase "Mozilla Thunderbird" would not create an alert.