We have a content type (News Brief) that will be included in our site news mailing. We also have an input format, complete with a pair of filters, which we will use to prepare the site news for sending to our users' email accounts. Now we need to start the processes of assembling the site news message.

To do this, we are going to create an action. In Drupal parlance, an action is a particular task that can be executed in response to a particular event. Using the Trigger module, administrators can tie particular events (such as a node being published or a new user joining the system) to a particular action.

What we will be doing is defining a new action that will bring all the pieces of our site news message together, and then send it to users. Later, we will create a trigger to run the action whenever a news brief is published.

We will begin by registering the new action.