Timing Issue for Moving Row from Staging Sheet to Main Sheet

Bethany Garcia

I'm building a workflow for our HR and Recruiting department to use to track job posting requisitions. If they check a box on the master sheet to repost the job again I am copying the row to a staging sheet, making a few cell updates to change values or clear values, then want to move it back to the master sheet as a new job requisition.

I'm running into a timing issue though. When the row is moved to staging I have workflow automations built to clear a handful of columns, set a few date fields automatically and change a few cell values. I need to trigger the row moving back to the master record after all of those actions are finished but in my testing I can't get it to move at the right time, it seems to be moving back before all of the actions are complete.

It doesn't seem like I can set the order of the workflows to happen either, or drag and drop. Has anyone found a way to get around a timing issue like this? Or, if I create the automations in the right order, with moving to the sheet as the bottom one in the list, will that resolve it? I wasn't sure if workflow automations process from top to bottom or not.

Paul Newcome

Try including more conditions to say that if it changes to checked and this column is blank and another column is blank and a third column is not blank, so on and so forth.

Bethany Garcia

@Paul Newcome Thank you for the suggestion - if I set-up a workflow with a lot of conditions, and not all conditions are met yet when it gets triggered, will it continue to trigger until it sees the conditions are met? For example, if I set-up the automation to move the row based on the trigger of a specific column changing to any value, but with the condition that 3 specific columns are blank (to indicate the other automations completed) and the status is equal to job posted (to indicate that automation completed), but when the trigger of a specific column changing to any value happens before the status is set to job posted, will the workflow continue to try to trigger until it sees all conditions are met? Or will it only trigger once when it first sees that first column change to any value and never go back to it? That's the part I'm not sure of.

I also tried a different approach that I thought would work but I'm running into the invalid workflow because it was triggered by 5 different workflow error which I have no idea how to fix. I tried creating a chain reaction with one thing happening per workflow, so that when the row is first added to staging the first column value is changed, then a separate workflow to watch for that value to change to then clear a certain column, then when that column is cleared to clear another column, then when that column is cleared to change the status, with the goal of the trigger to move the row to be the changing of the status in that final workflow. But I'm getting that invalid workflow error of "This workflow was triggered by at least 5 other workflows, which exceeds the maximum allowed. Please modify the workflows that are reacting to this one so they don't trigger each other.". I can't figure out what is causing that, are you familiar with why this is caused and how to fix it?

I feel like this shouldn't be so hard and that I'm missing something basic!

Andrée Starå

Hi @Bethany Garcia

I hope you're well and safe!

To add to Paul's excellent advice/answer.

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Bethany Garcia

@Andrée Starå I just shared the two sheets with you - the main/master tracker and my staging sheet.

In the main tracking sheet there is a single row of data. The way the workflow is supposed to operate is that when the Job Status on that sheet changes to "Job Closed - Reposted", that initiates the automation to copy the row to the staging sheet. Once on the staging sheet the automations on that sheet are supposed to flow in the order they are numbered, with one triggering the next in the order until it gets to the end and is copied back to the main sheet. What is happening though is once the row is copied to the staging sheet something is causing the automation to error out at the end. I currently have the final workflow of copying the row back over disabled so I could try to troubleshoot the issue on the staging sheet first before it gets moved over.

If you need to retest the logic you should be able to just delete the row from staging, set the Job Status back to Job Posted and save the row, then move it back to Job Closed - Reposted and start the workflow on the staging sheet again.

Anything you can do to help or anything you see that could be causing the issue is much appreciated! Please let me know if I can provide any additional information or screenshots to help troubleshoot.

KimberlyEbel

Very interested in the solution to this! I've got similarly-constructed workflows that are also running into the "invalid workflow because it was triggered by 5 different workflows" error. If there are (working) alternative methods, I'd love to know!