# Drone steps not triggering on pull request

**URL:** <https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834>\
**Category:** Drone Support\
**Created:** [November 15, 2022, 1:56pm UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834 "2022-11-15T13:56:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jason\_Wright](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/drone.discourse.group/jason_wright/32/8196_2.png) [@Jason\_Wright](https://drone.discourse.group/u/Jason_Wright)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 1:56pm UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834/1 "2022-11-15T13:56:38Z")

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I have a Drone pipeline containing steps that I would like to trigger on a pull\_request to specific branches, and on promotion to specific environments. The correct steps are triggered when I promote the build to the desired environments. The issue is that the steps are not triggering on a pull request. I’ve checked the Drone docs and am not sure what I’m doing wrong. Any help is appreciated!

Trigger clause for the affected steps (please ignore syntax, edited for this comment):

> when:  
> branch:  
> -development  
> -PM-\*  
> event:  
> -pull\_request  
> -promote  
> target:  
> -test  
> -testing

The intended functionality is to have these steps trigger when promoted to test/testing environments. This is only ever done from source branches matching PM-\*, and is working correctly.

What is not working is when a pull request to the development is opened/updated, these steps are not triggered.

What am I not understanding?

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![d1wilko](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/drone.discourse.group/d1wilko/32/6474_2.png) [@d1wilko](https://drone.discourse.group/u/d1wilko)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 2:29pm UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834/2 "2022-11-15T14:29:01Z")

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Hi @Jason_Wright ,

I’m wondering if the problem is the mix of pull\_request event and target

what happens if you split it into 2 seperate (but functionally identical) steps, something like

step1:  
when:  
event: pull\_request  
step2:  
when:  
event: promote  
target:  
-test  
-testing

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jason\_Wright](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/drone.discourse.group/jason_wright/32/8196_2.png) [@Jason\_Wright](https://drone.discourse.group/u/Jason_Wright)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834/3 "2022-11-15T14:48:14Z")

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Hi @d1wilko, thank you for your response!

Yes I can do that and it works as I intend, but I’m trying to avoid duplicating the steps as there are quite a lot of them and that would mean duplicate code to maintain.

If it is not possible to mix pull request event & target triggers I will just duplicate the steps, but thought I would ask the question as I can’t see anywhere in the Drone docs which explicitly states these triggers can’t be used together.

Thanks,  
Jason

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![d1wilko](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex003/user_avatar/drone.discourse.group/d1wilko/32/6474_2.png) [@d1wilko](https://drone.discourse.group/u/d1wilko)\
**Post date:** [November 15, 2022, 3:14pm UTC](https://drone.discourse.group/t/drone-steps-not-triggering-on-pull-request/12834/4 "2022-11-15T15:14:17Z")

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Ok I am glad to hear that works

But I agree the docs aren’t clear on this - I will have a look at the code and try to figure out what the actual intended behaviour