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AND Automation Conditions Being Ignored ?

Topic Labels: Automations Formulas
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menhguin
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I'm having an issue with my automations where the specified conditions are being completely ignored. I have a filter set to only send emails to records where the "60-day group" field is empty. This applies not only for the initial Trigger Conditions, but also every single step. However, the automation is still sending emails to records where this field is clearly not empty.

I've double-checked my conditions multiple times and can't find any reason why this would be happening. It's like the conditions I'm setting are just being disregarded. This is also occurring to other fields such as "Automation Test Subject" being checked and Profile Last Updated being more than 180 days ago.

Has anyone else experienced this issue of automations ignoring explicit filters? Is there something I'm missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

6 Replies 6

Hey @menhguin

Based on your screenshot you are using many conditions in your automation. I would suggest you use the testing feature with no configuration to see which records will be processed in the test. So you will recognize why those records are on the list. 

If you can't recognize the reason, please cancel all your filters, and test the automation many times. Every next time, please apply the next filter you need. In this way, I recognize the filtering feature per condition, so I see if the expected records are in the list or not. If not, it means that the last added filtering condition is not set up correctly. 

What happened to my client in the past, is that he had many automation with multiple conditions to perform updates on records, this caused updates he didn't expect on records so his records could trigger his new automation. You can see that from the recorded history, but if the conditions are in the formula, you can't see that.

I would suggest to optimise the whole set up of automation in your base, this will be helpful. 

Please let us know for the your results. 

Thanks 

Dimitris Goudis | 3Nuggets

Could you provide the formula for the '60-day group' field?  I'm wondering if there's an issue where, while it looks like the field is empty to us, the automation is picking up some sort of data in the field and I vaguely remember this happening to me before

Hi,

To clarify, I want the automation to trigger when 60-Day Notice is empty. My issue is most of the records it's triggering on are not empty for 60-Day Notice. I also want the automation to trigger only when Automation Test Subject checkbox is ✔️, but none of the records in that table meet that criteria.

In other words, it seems to be completely ignoring criteria I set both at the first step and subsequent steps. I made heavy use of AND conditionals because in programming, it's assumed that using it too much would simply reduce the number of records selected, not increase it as it would if I used OR. I have no idea what's causing this issue.

In any case, for your reference, here's the formula for the 60-day group.

IF(
  AND(
    {Profile Last Updated},
    IS_BEFORE({Profile Last Updated}, DATESTR(DATETIME_PARSE('2024-01-01')))
  ),
  '✅'
)

Any advice on this is greatly appreciated!

- Minh

Interesting!  That formula looks fine.  Hmm I think if I were you I'd add an 'Update record' step to the automation that would update the triggering record immediately when the automation triggers as well as inside the conditionals after the email gets sent and see what the data logs showed

If you're thinking that the data's fine and there's an issue with how the automation's triggering then you may want to open a support ticket directly so that Airtable support can help you investigate though!

Hi,
The formula is strange. It seems like a char missed in brackets otherwise output must be always empty
Now it's like  IF( {complex condition} , '' )
'' - means empty string
In Airtable, using  IF( condition, value_if_true , value_if_false ) you can omit last parameter, and default is "show nothing".
By way, the formula is overcomplicated, 

IF(IS_BEFORE({Profile Last Updated},'2024-01-01'), '')

does the same. but as long as  value_if_true equals '' (empty string) , it has no sence. 

Other advices - 
You can check automation history and compare with changes history of a record that triggered one of last runs.
I would say that when I have a lot of conditions (5 or more) to put in automation, I usually create additional formula field and mix them all, like IF( AND ( condition1 , cond2 , ,,,etc ), 'Send mail' ) and then trigger automation by a single check. So it's easier to see which records are processed and which are not.