My automation will only run for one category at a time

[Sarah_Koenig]

I’ve created an automation that splits a record from one table into several other records by their steps and displays them on a new table. It then links them via dependencies so that they are optimized for the Gantt display. The automation will only work for one category at a time even though there is nothing in the automation specifying category, as this is social media it will only work to create dependencies for the records in Pinterest OR TikTok and it makes it very difficult to switch between them but I don’t understand why it’s doing this or how it even knows that the records are of different categories since it’s not a part of the automation.
Additionally, it will let me automate dependencies for anything with a start and end date but if Airtable could make it so that I could also add a dependency for the final publication date as a milestone so that I don’t have to go through and do them all by hand that would be immensely helpful.

[Justin_Barrett]

Sarah_Koenig:

The automation will only work for one category at a time

Automations are triggered based on adding or changing individual records, not groups of records. If you do something to five different records that ends up triggering a given automation, that automation will run five times: once per record. While it may look like Airtable is keying in to the category of a given record, it’s just keying in to that specific records field options, whatever they happen to be.

Sarah_Koenig:

Additionally, it will let me automate dependencies for anything with a start and end date but if Airtable could make it so that I could also add a dependency for the final publication date as a milestone so that I don’t have to go through and do them all by hand that would be immensely helpful.

Could you describe your automation setup in greater detail? Without knowing more specifics, it’s tough to offer specific suggestions.