Hello! When a line item is created, several subitems might also be created based on the answers on the form. Those subitems can have 1 of 3 Statuses, but typically the lifecycle is 1, 2, 3 and then when all the subitems are 3, there is an automation waiting for this to occur and then other automations run.
This worked smashingly until people changed a subitem from 3 to 2 and then back to 3 and/or deleted one of the subitems. When those things occurred, the automation that looked for all the subitems to be 3’s no longer worked and the subsequent automations don’t run.
My understanding of the automations is that they’re trigger-based. So anytime something changes, the automations run and ask themselves “Does this change pertain to me and do I need to do something?”. It’s as if Monday only allows the subitem to be a 3 once. The system understands when it becomes a 2 or 1 again (aka “not done”) but then ignores the fact that the subitem changed back to a 3. Or in the case of the deleted subitem, it’s as if the system “remembers” that there were X number of subitems initially, and the phantom/deleted subitem will never go to status 3 and the further automations don’t run. Why? (Tell me why-yy? Ain’t nothing but a heartache…)
Can you please send a screenshot of the automation that is dependent on those 3 subitem status changes? I’d love to do some testing on my end to understand expected behaviour here.
Typically is you have an automation set up to trigger an action based on a status change, no matter how many times, the action should perform. However, as mentioned, I’d need to understand what those recipes are to ensure I am correct here!
Just to be clear, I understand that people often are changing the subitems from 3 to 2, then back to 3 etc. If that’s the case, the first time all subitems are set to 3, this would trigger the automation, and if subitems are changed post trigger, i.e. changed back to 2 then 3, because that parent item has already changed based on the initial trigger, it is expected that if things were to change in the subitems after this, nothing would occur in the parent item. If you change a subitem from 2 to 3, unless you have an automation set up to reset the parent item status, the parent item will remain as it is.
I appreciate your efforts to help me here! I understand what you are saying, but the subitem status changes are occurring prior to all the subitems being marked Done (“3” in my explanation) - which is perplexing. If the Status arc proceeds normally (1 - Not Started, 2 - Working On It, 3 - Done) then everything is great. Any deviation stops the process though.
I’m wondering if I have other automations that are somehow causing this behavior? I recently had an issue where a column I created with a default value stopped being filled in. I learned that if you have too many “When an item is created” automations, any field values set via Board Settings > Settings > Default Item Values will be ignored/not set. Perhaps some other automation is inadvertently causing my problem to occur. I’ll keep digging. Thanks for trying.
Thank you for getting back to me Matt and for your explanation!
Hm, it is a little strange… You’re welcome to share a screen-recording demonstrating this behaviour in action so I can get a better understanding of what’s happening on your end. Otherwise, let me know if you find anything funky with the automations and we can continue investigating.
