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Automation Trigger - When Record Matches ANOTHER Field Table Value

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Ryan_Taliercio
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

When creating a trigger using the “When Record Matches A Condition”, is there a way to enter a table value into the matching field, other than a hard-coded value? For example, the table has 2 columns, [Cost] and [Original Cost]. Want to trigger an update when [COST] != [Original Cost], but it seems to only allow entering of an actual value. “When Record is Updated” trigger does work to accomplish this, but it can take about 10 seconds to update the destination field, and begins to execute the trigger the moment the value box is changed (If the value entered 100, it seems to run for 1,0,0 and then 100, as I can see the other fields updating with multiple values until the final value). Sometimes, if we type too quickly, it doesn’t update and will update based on “10” rather than “100”.

3 Replies 3

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest & most glaring problems with Automations.

It is a HUGE ROADBLOCK & MAJOR LIMITATION that automations trigger while users are still editing a field.

Automations should WAIT until users HAVE LEFT A FIELD before triggering an automation, but they don’t.

This major flaw makes automations infinitely less powerful than they could be.

Off the top of my head, I can’t really think of a way to solve this, but maybe others have some tricks up their sleeve that they can share.

I think that this problem is why nearly everybody is triggering their automations with checkbox fields or single-select fields — but then your automation has suddenly become a very manual process.

The best thing I can think of is to trigger your automation on a schedule, but even then, the schedule could trigger while you’re in the middle of editing a field!

But a schedule is a delayed trigger, so you will be waiting for a while until it kicks in. And even worse, a scheduled trigger eats up your very limited amount of automation runs every month. And Airtable gives you no way to add more runs into your monthly set of runs!

So for scheduling automations, your best solution might be to do scheduled automations with Integromat, which lets you purchase more runs if you go over the limit. But even still, the same problem remains: the schedule could run while you’re editing a field.

Maybe someone else has some better ideas than what I’ve come up with.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you write an email to support@airtable.com to ask them to PLEASE change this behavior. Without this behavior changed, the usefulness of automations is incredibly reduced.

Anat_Meged
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Having the same issue here… Were you able to solve it @Ryan_Taliercio Or any new ideas on how to pass this @ScottWorld ?
Tnx

What issue are you having?