I’m encountering a problem with the beta automation feature, specifically “When a column changes, connect the item where the Column matches a different column in another board by OVERWRITING new matched item.”
Workflow Overview:
Industry: Consultancy
Objective: Enable project managers to view the most recent meeting dates between clients and consultants at a glance.
Structure: Each client’s meetings are recorded on individual boards. A new meeting entry on a client’s board triggers the creation of an item in a “Master List” board, capturing all meetings. This item includes a text field with the client project’s name, matching it to our “Active Client List” board.
Automation Setup:
A “Master List” board automation identifies new items and connects them to the “Active Client List” board. This connection is based on matching the “name in Active Client List” text column with the “Name” in the “Active Client List” board, intending to overwrite the existing connection with the most recent meeting data.
Issue:
Expected Behavior: Each new meeting updates the connected item in the “Active Client List” with the latest meeting’s data (status, summary, etc.), overwriting previous entries.
Actual Behavior: New meetings add additional connections instead of overwriting, leading to multiple entries for a single client. While filtering by the Date column shows the latest meeting, I can’t filter status or summary columns to display only the most recent data.
Has anyone faced a similar issue or can offer insights into ensuring the automation overwrites the connected item with only the most recent meeting’s data?
Hey @TaliG - I would hold off on using this feature for now and ensure you send this feedback to monday.com support. We have had numerous issues with this function.
What I believe is happening is the transfer is creating a copy of the automation under the new owner then, it is to remove the current version (running under the current owner). This removal does not always happen, thus leaving two active automations but you can only view one. You are basically getting a phantom automation. We have had this with webhooks as well causing them to fire multiple times (causing a heck of a mess).
This is an issue with the overall “Transfer All Automation” ownership (admin function) as well, and has been for years. monday is aware of this but it has never been solved.
We’ve developed an app called Advanced Item Link & Match. It was built to address monday’s native solution shortcomings. Here’s the difference & an example →
Advanced conditions - You can specify up to 4 conditions instead of 1 for more accurate matching.
Logic flexibility #1- You can connect all items that meet the condition or just the first one.
Logic flexibility #2 - You match empty values or not match empty values
Supports override existing or add to existing (just like monday.com’s solution)
Trigger flexibility - Supports connecting both on column change & on item creation.
Built for scale & actually works
2 conditions example (you can use 1-4 conditions for matching) -
You can find it in the monday.com app marketplace in the platform.
Hope that helps!
If you have any questions I’m available here - daniel@fantasymedia.io
