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Smart Alert Triggers let you automate responses to Smart Alerts based on the organizational unit (OU) and confidence level you define. When a student generates a Smart Alert that matches a Trigger’s conditions, the Trigger fires its configured Actions with no manual review required to initiate the response. Smart Alerts are still generated regardless of whether any Triggers are configured.

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Create a Trigger

  1. Go to Triggers in GoGuardian Admin.
  2. Click Add New Trigger.
  3. Enter a name for the Trigger. Choose one or more OUs to apply it to.
    OU coverage cascades to child OUs. A Trigger applied to a parent OU (such as “Middle School”) also covers all child OUs beneath it, such as 6th Grade, 7th Grade, and 8th Grade. To apply a Trigger to all users in your organization, select the root OU, displayed as ”/”.
  4. Choose a category: Explicit or Proxy. Each Trigger supports one category. To cover both, create a separate Trigger for each.
    Proxy services route student traffic through the proxy’s own URL instead of the destination site’s URL. Because GoGuardian sees only the proxy’s URL, blocked destination sites may remain accessible through the proxy. The Proxy category identifies this behavior so you can act on it directly.
  5. Choose the confidence threshold for the Trigger:
    If your Trigger is producing too many responses to inaccurate alerts, increase the confidence level. For Proxy triggers, start at Medium confidence and raise the threshold if false positives are common.
  6. Select one or more Actions to fire when a Smart Alert meets the Trigger conditions. Actions can be combined in any configuration. See Understand Trigger Actions below for a description of each option.
  7. Click Save to activate the Trigger.
  8. The new Trigger appears in your Triggers list with its assigned OUs, category, and confidence level. Confirm that the correct OUs and confidence level are displayed. The Trigger is now active and will fire its Actions when a matching Smart Alert is generated.
Create a Trigger Create a Trigger Create a Trigger

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Understand Trigger Actions

Each Action fires automatically when a Smart Alert meets the Trigger’s conditions. Select one or more Actions when configuring a Trigger.
Administrators receiving Notify and assign notifications must have an active GoGuardian Admin account registered at manage.goguardian.com with Admin access enabled.
Each student may only be in one Custom Group at a time. Students already in a different Custom Group are not added when the Add to Custom Group Action fires.

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Enable Image Filtering

Image filtering extends Smart Alerts’ Explicit category to scan images containing sexually explicit content on pages students visit. When a matching image is detected, it is blurred rather than the full page being blocked, unless a Block page Action is also configured.
Image filtering requires a Trigger assigned to the student’s OU with the Explicit category selected. GoGuardian Admin does not scan images on sites it categorizes as Appropriate or Educational (including Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube). Images may take a few seconds to process after a page loads.
  1. In GoGuardian Admin, go to the Triggers page and select Edit on the Trigger you want to update. The Trigger must use the Explicit category.
  2. Under Choose Category and Confidence Level, turn on the Include images toggle.
  3. For Triggers with the Block page Action, you can set a separate block page message for images. Enter the message in the image-specific text field. The default message applies if you leave this blank.
  4. Click Save.
  5. The Trigger now scans images on pages visited by students in the assigned OUs. Matching images appear blurred with a GoGuardian padlock symbol. Clicking the blurred area shows the block message, the URL, and the name of the Trigger.
Explicit alerts generated from image filtering appear in the Smart Alerts list with the sub-category Image or Text to indicate the source. Use the Category filter on the alerts list to filter by sub-category. Administrators added to a Trigger’s Notify and assign Action also receive email notifications for image alerts.

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Resources

Manage Custom Groups

Review how Custom Groups work before using the Add to Custom Group Action.

Configure Block Pages

Customize the block page message students see when a Trigger blocks a site.
Last modified on July 15, 2026