Prevent row change automations triggering when new rows are added

Ryan Catling

Currently any form with column formulas will trigger row change automations every time a new row is added. This results in both the new row automation AND row change automation sending every time a new row is added.

Both the column formulas and different messages for new vs changed rows are necessary so just using row change notifications isn't an option.

My idea is to stop row change automations from triggering when a column formula applies to a new row.

I do have a secondary idea and that is to allow selection of a delay to the new row notification triggering. So lets say it could take up to 10 minutes for a new row to be completed. The automation could be set to trigger 10 minutes after the row is first created so that the full completed row is caught in the new rown notification rather than a new row and row change notification being sent out (a similar delay would likely have to be selected for the row change notification to offset the new row delay). But this is more of a nice to have, whereas I believe the above should be the default.

Paul Newcome

You could insert a couple of helper columns. The first would be a checkbox that basically uses an IF/AND statement to make sure all of the column formulas and whatnot have updated on a new row and check the box when all of these have been completed. This box being checked in addition to a double-check condition for the box being checked can be your "new row" trigger.

The other helper column would be text/number column. This will be blank when new rows are added but you would add a second action to the "new row" automation that changes the cell value to some sort of indicator like "New Alert Sent" or "Existing Row" or something like that. Your "existing row" automation would use a condition looking at this column to see if it is blank or not. If it isn't blank, you can let it run.