Automations run simultaneously rather than in sequence

Automation action steps always run sequentially, never simultaneously.

However, I have noticed delays with lookup fields & rollup fields getting their values refreshed/displayed after a linked record field is updated, especially if they involve a synced table.

Are you including lookup fields or rollup fields in your email?

If so, the best solution would be to add a 5-second pause before your emails are sent, but the bigger problem is that Airtable has given us no native ability to insert pauses or delays in our automations.

The only way to insert a pause is to use the “Run Script” action and write a custom JavaScript. Here’s a script that gives a 5-second delay/pause:

function delay(seconds) {
    const startTime = Date.now()
    while (Date.now() - startTime < seconds * 1000)
        continue
}
delay(5)

One thing to note is that most of these limitations and workarounds disappear when using Make’s advanced automations for Airtable, which is the most powerful automation tool on the market for Airtable.

Make even offers its own built-in sleep tool to add pauses or delays in an automation, although those typically aren’t even necessary because Make communicates with Airtable via its API, so it only continues to the next step after it gets a successful response from Airtable.

Even better, you can tell Make to process automation runs one-at-a-time instead of simultaneously, to make sure that all automations are processed in an exact order.  

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one of the ways that you could instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

I also give live demonstrations of how to use Make in many of my Airtable podcast appearances. For example, in this video, I show how to work with Airtable arrays in Make.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

function delay(seconds) {
const startTime = Date.now()
while (Date.now() - startTime < seconds * 1000)
continue
}
delay(5)

Thanks Scott,

Yea, I was using a lookup field. Thanks that good to know about the delay.
I ended up changing it to the respective field in "Find Records", but the problem is that the find only displays results as a list. 

If there are multiple records found in the automation, it will display them all in a list. But I only want the most recent one, which is why I created a lookup field to get that data but limit it to 1 result.

Are there any solutions to get around that find record issue?

That's pretty challenging in Airtable, but I discuss how to do that in this episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast.

However, as I was mentioning above, I typically have most of my Airtable consulting clients doing this sort of thing with Make's Airtable automations, because it's so easy to specify "the most recent value". However, if you've never dived into Make before, the challenge would be getting over the learning curve of understanding Make.