Hi David,
You’d need to have a formula field with the formula DATEADD({Publication Date}, -7, "days")
to first calculate the date of 7 days before the publication date.
Your idea about using a view to show such records works, and there’s an automation trigger for “When record enters view” that you can use
After that, you’d make the action “Update record”, where you would update the record that triggered the automation, and paste the value from the formula field mentioned above.
Given that for the automation to work you must have a formula field with the calculated date in it, do you think we could just do away with the automation and just use that formula field instead?