I’m running an advertising magazine where each Group in my board represents a specific publication date, I have multiple Items (different types of ads).
The designer marks each item as “Done” as they finish them. My current automation sends me a notification every time an item’s status changes to “Done.” This results in dozens of notifications per day, which is overwhelming.
My Goal: Is there a way to trigger a notification ONLY for the first item that changes status? I want to know he has started the work for that date, but I don’t need an alert for every subsequent item he starts..
Does anyone have a workaround or a specific automation recipe for this?
Hello @yoeli This is a common ask and there’s no native “first item in a group” trigger yet.
Simple workaround
Add a Status column at the group level like “Work Started”.
Create an automation: when any item in the group changes to Done, set group status to Work Started.
Create another automation: when group status changes to Work Started, notify me.
Since the group status only changes once, you’ll only get one notification per publication date.
If you need stricter logic, this can also be done with Make by checking whether a Done item already exists before sending a notification.
Dr. Tanvi Sachar
Monday Certified Partner, Tuesday Wizard
That’s a common pain point with status-based automations. One workaround is to add a helper column (like a checkbox or status) that gets updated only the first time an item in a group is marked “Done,” and trigger the notification off that instead. It takes a bit of setup, but it cuts down the noise a lot. I usually track these automation tweaks in Phonexa so I remember what logic I used later.
Thanks for your answer.
I didn’t understand your solution
Because every item will change to Work Started when I change the statuses to Done
Then I will receive a hundred notifications every day (I have about a hundred details per day)
A simple workaround is to add a helper column at the group or item level (like a checkbox or status) that gets set only the first time an item in that group is marked “Done.” Then trigger the notification based on that column instead of every status change. It takes a bit of setup, but it keeps notifications under control. I usually track automation logic like this in Phonexa so it’s easy to reuse later.