Changing variable type from int to char to enable trigger

These are devices that have been deployed in remote equipment for years. I shouldn't have to re-flash them with new sketch just to get this basic feature. Why isn't int a supported type for triggers? seems so obvious that it would be.
The suggestion of hard coding thresholds to generate booleans in the sketch seems to miss the point of the cloud configurable triggers. id like to change the threshold of certain notifications with out needing to reflash a new sketch each time. no?