[Automations]: Trigger on row changes with formula columns

[Federico_Stefanato]

Hi all,
is there any limitation in the trigger detection from row changes or I am missing something?

I’m trying to run an action through an automation triggered by a row change.
The actual value is changed externally and the column value is a formula showing such value.

The automation should update the row with the changes count.

However, the automation is only triggered if I manually change the row (in the text filed) but not when I perform the external change.

Here’s the sample scenario:

Thanks in advance for any suggestion!
Cheers.

[Jean_Pierre_Traets]

Dear @Federico_Stefanato,

Unfortunately it’s not yet possible, see post below:

Issues with automation rules on formula column

Hi Joeri, You are correct. Changes to formulaic columns will not trigger automations. We’d like to support this in the future but for now, the best work around is to listen to the input columns. Preeyanka

[ABp]

Hey guys, you are a bit over my head with this discussion, but @Federico_Stefanato are you talking about similar functionality that I was looking for here?

Transition, or "promote" a row, and maintain linked status with new row

Hello! I would like help trying to set up some rows that represent work items in my team that uses Coda for planning. We do a lot of brain dump into rows, and loosely collect these items as “ideas,” things like “fix broken Twitter API” to things like “build new feature on website.” What I’d like to do is “transition,” or “promote” these ideas to their destination data type, be that a full on project with phases, or a one-off work item. However, I’d like to maintain a relationship with the or…

So sum up, I’d like to be able to:

1. Create a related row via a button action - ideally with the option to copy the contents of the “originating” row to the new one, but not necessarily…
2. Keep the statuses of the two rows in sync via some conditions, ie if the new row moves to “closed,” it moves the originating rows status to “resolved,” etc.

Very curious if you are thinking about similar functionality with your request, thanks!

[Johg_Ananda]

I think the problem is that if you had it trigger formulaically, they could have automations firing off in an unlimited way that could affect performance across the whole app. Think if you had an automation that was going to run everytime a row changed, and the row was a Time column. If the formula was now() it would be trigger the automation every second. This times 500 rows in a table … every second … would be a lot of automations. That’s my hunch.

[Federico_Stefanato]

Thank you @Jean_Pierre_Traets: very kind to pointing it out.
Well, let’s wait, then…!

[Federico_Stefanato]

Hi @Johg_Ananda,
I agree with you: there might be some performance disadvantages. But I guess this might be handled with a threshold limit (btw, even when edited manually, not all the changes are triggered, if too close in time).

Thank you.

[Federico_Stefanato]

Hi @ABp,
well, not exactly what I was referring to.
But what you ask for can be done: I’ll try to post a sample as soon as I can.

Cheers.

[Federico_Stefanato]

Hi @ABp,

I posted a possible solution on your original post:
Transition, or "promote" a row, and maintain linked status with new row.

Let me know if this works for you.