Automation Alert to Track the status change of a field from one state to other(s)

Hi @TMR_RC
I think I understand what you are looking for. You only want an email if the Status changes from Pending to Not Working or Needs Review, or Action Needed. If it switched to those options from some other status do not email.
A quick question first. Do you want an email if the status changes from Not Working to Needs Review?
If so,
Create a new View i named mine “Alert Me” with a filter of Status contains Pending, Not Working, Needs Review, Action Needed
Then create an Automation
Trigger: When Record is Update, Watch the select Field in the Alert Me view

Conditional Option:
If Select is any of Not Working, Needs Review, Action Needed

Send an Email

This will also alert you if the status changes from any of the three options to another of the three options but will not email if it changes from one of those options to something else outside of the range.

Vivid-Squid wrote:

Hi @TMR_RC
I think I understand what you are looking for. You only want an email if the Status changes from Pending to Not Working or Needs Review, or Action Needed. If it switched to those options from some other status do not email.
A quick question first. Do you want an email if the status changes from Not Working to Needs Review?
If so,
Create a new View i named mine “Alert Me” with a filter of Status contains Pending, Not Working, Needs Review, Action Needed
Then create an Automation
Trigger: When Record is Update, Watch the select Field in the Alert Me view

Conditional Option:
If Select is any of Not Working, Needs Review, Action Needed

Send an Email

This will also alert you if the status changes from any of the three options to another of the three options but will not email if it changes from one of those options to something else outside of the range.

This is a helpful start and I think I understand it.

However, my situation is a little more complex and a little more unique than this.

I’ll keep the same “terms” that we’re using in this example for continuity.

Ok - so the filter that you’ve built, by watching the “Alert Me” view in Table 10, and filtering the action to run for “Not Working”, “Needs Review” or “Action Needed”, makes sense, but it doesn’t cover exactly what I need.

Essentially, in my example a status of “pending” is essentially the penultimate step in my process before “DONE”. Meaning, once a record gets to the “pending” state, my internal process that I’m tracking has an expectation that the next step is for that record to move into a “DONE” status.

If something changes this record’s process flow and then requires additional work to be done on that record - and the record does not progress to a “DONE” status, and it goes back into an “action needed” status, or “Not Working”, or “Needs Review”, that’s when I want to trigger an alert.

I’ll illustrate this.

Let’s say a record’s natural flow is being tracked by a field called “status”.
In a normal process from start to finish a record might have a status that follows these:

1. Work Order Created
2. Testing
3. Not Working
4. Action Needed
5. Needs Review
6. Pending
7. Done

(Let’s say that if a record goes through our process and hits all of those states linearly, then that’s the normal flow and I don’t need an alert triggered).

The only time I want an alert triggered is if I get to step #6, where status = PENDING, and if something happens where instead of the task completing and being flipped to “DONE”, someone determines that a record requires more work.

So, if it goes from “Pending” backwards in the workflow to a state that is either:
3. Not Working
4. Action Needed
5. Needs Review

That’s when I’d like a trigger alert.

It’s essentially my way of saying “hey pay attention to this. Something went wrong and deviated from the normal work flow - let’s find out why”.

Hi @TMR_RC
You should still be able to do what you are looking for with the information I gave. Since you need to know the highest option that was selected, to know if you are going back or forward in the list you can have an automation put some text into a field when the status changes to a certain option. Then use the conditional options to see if that was set or not AND the new status is any of the items lower in your list.

You may not even need to do all of that using conditional options wisely, my brain is fried for the day though but I was able to make this quickly in my demo base.

Definitely! Thank you.
I’ll look into that. I was trying to play around with the conditional options, but you’re other method of once a record hits a status, it puts text into another field should work. Because then I would have another field to watch for to trigger the “going backwards”.

Thanks!

TMR_RC