Adding OR & NOT to automations "Builder"

Feature requests
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1

Hi Folks,

I’m creating a mock PTO management system. I’ve found it reasonably repetitive to do specific tasks using the custom automations builder (for lack of a better word). I think AND is a handy bitwise operator to have when building automations. Still, I believe having the OR and NOT bitwise operators can improve user experience tremendously.

In my use case, I have two status columns, one for status and one for decision. It would be great if I can set up an automation that looks something like this:

When status (decision) changes to something (approved) OR When status (decision) changes to something (rejected), change status (status) to something (processed) AND move item to group (processed).

The workaround would be to create two separate automations, which is somewhat tedious and time-consuming.

Automation 1:

When status (decision) changes to something (approved), change status (status) to something (processed) AND move item to group (processed).

Automation 2:

When status (decision) changes to something (rejected), change status (status) to something (processed) AND move item to group (processed).

In the example above, you can see how things could get really time consuming for complex boards and automations. Having the OR bitwise operator would be great for such situations.

Another Important bitwise operator would be the NOT operator; if I can choose when the status is not something, I don’t have to repeat the same logic in cases where there are more than two potential statuses.

An example use case is where monday.com is used as a CRM to reach out to everyone who is not a customer at a specified date (Just an example):

When a Date arrives (next scheduled interaction) AND Status is NOT something (customer) then send an email (example email) to someone (email column).

The current workaround is:

Automation 1:

When a Date arrives (next scheduled interaction) AND Status is something (lead) then send an email (example email) to someone (email column).

Automation 2:

When a Date arrives (next scheduled interaction) AND Status is something (vendor) then send an email (example email) to someone (email column).

Automation 3:

When a Date arrives (next scheduled interaction) AND Status is something (partner) then send an email (example email) to someone (email column).

…and if there are more categories in that status, there would be more automations needed…

The other bitwise operators would make the automations platform incredibly flexible and powerful. Still, the NOT, OR and AND (lol) operators are the most important as they underpin all logic systems. In my opinion, this is a must-have for monday.com automations.

Kind Regards,

Ahmed

2

Agreed on the “OR” option! I just set up 15 automations that could have been 3, if I had an “or.”

Biggest use case: I want the same action to be triggered by three status options - just need that “and” to be an “or.”

Alternate option: let me select multiple status options.

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Hey @Julia-monday.com, is this feature being considered for a future launch? It would really be a HUGE timesaver if we could use OR or NOT while creating custom automations. Can you please provide an update?

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4

Upvote, especially given there is no way to organize your automations into groups/folders. It’s very challenging to have many automations and no OR or NOT forces you into a lot of automations.

5

Absolutely in agreement with this. I have automations that are failing because the “trigger” is the same, ie when a status changes to something, move it somewhere. It’s the ‘somewhere’ that is different based on the status chosen. About 15 automations when it should only be 1. Is there any feedback on this?

6

100% agreed with all the comments above. Monday is regularly adding new tweaks and changes, but this small but incredibly crucial feature continues to be ignored. Why?

Please add the OR operator if nothing else.

Not having simply an OR operator makes for a HUGE pain point for my company when using automations. We have to resort to creating many slightly different automations that could be accomplished with just a fraction of the number of automations. This is made worse when attempting to modify, test and organize these automations… absolute nightmare.

All of this makes for brittle solutions with Monday automations, is frustrating for all involved and does do not build confidence in the Monday platform as a whole.

2 Likes
7

I absolutely agree with this. I have a project board that contains 600 automations, if this feature is included, it would cut down the automation by 50% more or less.

2 Likes
8

How do you keep 600 automations straight? I want to implement some routing on our board and I’m afraid it will take our ~80 automations and turn it into over 200. It’s already hard enough to find the automation that I’m trying to adjust, turn off, delete. It’s also painful to misclick and have it exit where you were scrolled and take you all the way to the top of the automations again.

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9

How has there been no response to this from Monday? @Julia-monday.com This seems pretty basic.

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10

Was using Airtable for something different and just checked…they have the ability to use OR within the automations…as well as grouping automations to better manage them.

11

Seriously - how is this not a thing already? It’s SO fundamental to logic operations.

Originally I was looking to make a column non-editable based on the values of other columns; basically, if the dependent columns were not complete, the overall status could not be changed to complete. Again - such a basic/fundamental thing.

But I had to resort to using 15 automation rules to change it back to ‘Incomplete’ if any of the dependent columns were any of the possible values besides ‘Complete’.

Then I wanted to allow overrides for special circumstances - but I had to get a 3rd party app to update a ‘Modified By’ people column when the override column value is changed…

Come on guys…

1 Like
12

When creating a new automation with the new automation builder (which is awesome btw), you can currently set the trigger and the action. It would be great if we could also specify some “conditions”.

For example:
Trigger: When status changes from something to something
Conditions: If date is before sometime
Action: Notify someone

Taking it a step further, it would be really awesome if we could have multiple conditions so that we could build a complex combination of conditions such as:
IF (date is before sometime OR date is after some other time) AND (checkbox is checked)

1 Like
13

I would also love this feature.

To expand on this, an AND operator in addition to IF and OR would also be great. That way an automation would be triggered of two (or more) conditions are met.

By the way, I would also love it if one trigger could be used to start more than one action in the automation builder.

1 Like
14

I thought I’d put an AND operator in my last example, but I hadn’t - I’ve edited to include that now.

Also love the idea of multiple actions in a single automation.

2 Likes
15

Thanks for requesting this feature enhancement. I completely agree. I see that the “AND” feature has been added for custom automations, which is very helpful. But, it would be extremely helpful if we could also do:

  • Ability to include an “OR” condition
  • Ability to include a “NOT” condition
  • Ability to nest conditions
3 Likes
16

We also need this desperately, the current AND feature is very limited, only able to condition from status or assignee, which is useless if the automation was based on status anyway.

Example, we need to be able to:
IF status is X
AND custom field is Y
THEN do Z

17

If logic is planned for Q4 2021 according this board from monday: https://view.monday.com/1092205827-f4c654f1e91a8e4e76eedbb64150c940?r=use1

18

I need this feature too! Just for something as simple as creating recurring tasks that auto-push deadlines to the next month, six months, etc based on a status column.

19

I’m looking for the same thing with people and the creation of items on boards: when the status changes to something, and the person is (…), create an item on such board…

20

Hi there,

If you want to do this now and can’t wait, you’ll have to do it with an external tool such as Integromat.

Here is an example for @emcarr. I have not tried it exactly, it may be that a format is not yet exactly right but theoretically you can rebuild it like that.

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1 Like