How to know who actually changed a column value

Again, I ask you devs here for help about how to know who (or what) actually changed a column value when the action is triggered by a user.

I have an integration which uses “When column value changes” as a trigger.
If the action is “change column value” and both trigger and action are set to read and write on the same column, this potentially causes an endless loop.

For example, if my integration doubles the number inside a column, the value is doubled endlessly, despite the number was typed by a user or updated by the app.

As the app uses the ShortLivedToken key sent by the integration, the action is performed with the users credentials and there’s no way to know if the change came from the user or the app.

My current solution is to block the execution of the integration if the trigger column and the destination columns are the same, but that’s not so elegant and precludes some legit uses.

Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks for your help.

Anyone from monday can help me?

@OmerK

Hey @rob,

monday are bringing out service tokens which should help with your use case. This will provide a token linked to an app instead of a user so you will be able to track who made the change.

In the meantime, these are a couple of options I could think of as possible workarounds:

  • Have the user set up an ‘integration’ user to install the recipe. You will then know if it was the app or the user who updated the column
  • When you update the column, cache the value. When the column changes again, check if it is the same value that you just updated it to and then ignore it

@mitchell.hudson do you have any timeframe on when the service tokens are supposed to be available?

Hey @JCorrell ,

Unfortunately I don’t. They announced them at a partner event earlier this year, but haven’t heard anything since.

@OmerK Are you able to provide an ETA?

Hey @rob @mitchell.hudson @JCorrell ,

I checked it with the automations team, and this is in the discovery phase, if you want to hope to a call with our PM, I’d like to connect with you.

Also, just a reminder - for development related questions, please use the new developer community

https://community.monday.com/t/introducing-the-new-monday-developer-community-hub/

Thanks for your help, @OmerK

Is there anything we can test right now?