When Condition is met, only 1 Record is found instead of Multiple Records

[Vulf_Kirman]

Hello,

I have an issue which I will try to explain through the following screenshots:

THE SET UP

I have have a 3 Field (Column) Table with the following fields: (Name, Company and Re-Orientation Status)

• 

The AUTOMATION - Trigger Condition

• The trigger: When Re-Orientation Status is Overdue

The PROBLEM

When I test the trigger, only 1 record is found; however, the table above clearly shows that more than 1 record meets the trigger condition.

• 

Please advise on why this happens. Is there any way to fix this?

[Kamille_Parks]

Automations are triggered by individual records. So if three records change their status to “Overdue”, the Automation will run three times.

If you wanted bulk processing you’d have to add a “Find records” step that would give you a list of records which have an “Overdue” status. Since other Action steps cannot yet handle multiple record IDs at a time, depending on what you want to do with that list of records you may have to use the “Run a Script” action as opposed to the “Update a Record” action, for instance.

[Vulf_Kirman]

So this is the issue. I adjusted the automation to have an email sent to me. However, the e-mail was sent once even though, I expected multiple e-mails to be sent. In short, if the Automation had to run 3 times, it only runs 1 time.

[Kamille_Parks · Accepted solution]

Did the values for “Status” change to “Overdue” after you turned on the Automation, or before? Automations don’t check for all values as they currently exist when the Automation is turned on.

And if your Automation isn’t even on, and you’re just testing the steps, remember its only going to run for the “test” trigger record.

[Vulf_Kirman]

So for the test, the status was already set to “Overdue” prior to running the automation. And yes, for the actual automation, I set up an e-mail test to see how many e-mails I would get. I only got 1 e-mail.

[Kamille_Parks]

To clarify, a test of an automation step will run when you test it, regardless of whether the value recently changed or not.

For when the automation is turned on (and not in test mode), you didn’t answer whether the record values for “Status” were changed to “Overdue” before or after the automation was turned on.

• If only one record’s value changed to “Overdue” since the automation was turned on, you’re only going to get one email.
• If you’re saying “these three records weren’t ‘overdue’ until after the automation was turned on, but I still only received one email” then there’s some issue with your setup that needs some more exploration.

[Vulf_Kirman]

When the automation is turned on (not in test mode), the “Overdue” status is already set before the automation is turned on.

[Vulf_Kirman]

Also, how does the system determine the “test” trigger record? Does Airtable randomly choose a record?

[Kamille_Parks]

I think Airtable defaults to the first record in the chosen view/table

[Vulf_Kirman]

Hi Kamille,

Thank You for your help.

The status does change on a weekly basis. So I’ll have to wait it out to see if multiple records are reflected in separate e-mails.

I think the issue was that even though the automation was running, I was eager to see if everything was executing properly; so I hit the “test” button and it ran for the random “test” record.