Learn the lingo

Every automation has a trigger, a condition, and an action (or multiple!).

Show me the definitions for these

• Trigger: an event you choose which sets the automation into motion.
• Condition: a requirement that the trigger must meet in order for the automation to work.
• Action: an event that occurs as a result of the trigger and condition being met.

To further understand triggers, conditions, and actions, let's look at an example of a recipe: "When a status changes to something, then archive item".

In this case, the trigger is "When a status changes". The condition is "to something" (in our case, we chose the "No longer relevant" status label) and the action is "archive item".    

With this automation in place, every time an items' Status Column is given the "No longer relevant" label, that item will be automatically archived!

Note: To learn more about automation actions and how it affects pricing, check out the Automation and Integration Actions article.

Add an automation

When adding an automation, you'll have the option to customize your own recipe or to choose from a pre-set automation recipe (we'll show this later on!). To begin adding a custom automation, click to access the Automations Center and then select "Create custom automation" as so:

Now time to customize it! 🎉

Step 1: Choose a trigger

The first step in building your automation is to click on "When this happens" to pick a trigger. You can then choose a trigger from the options presented in the dropdown or by clicking "More options". A trigger can be a column from your board (i.e. Status, People, Date, etc.) or an action/event (i.e. item created, every time period, etc.):

In the example above, we've chosen the trigger to be a Status Column changing to something. Now, it's time to select the condition for this trigger!

Step 2: Select a condition

Depending on the trigger you've picked in step one, you will then need to select a condition. In this example, we want to trigger an action when the Status Column titled "Contract" changes to "Signed".

To do this, we've clicked into the underlined fields and selected the Status Column with the name "Contract" and then we've chosen the label "Signed" as so:

Note: The labels displayed correspond to the labels of the Status Column selected from your board.

If you'd like to specify additional conditions in your recipe, simply click on the plus sign next to the condition that you set and choose another one! As an example, we've added another condition of "if person is someone". 

Now, the automation will only be set in motion if "Contract" changes to "Signed" and if the sales rep is assigned to Noy! 💥

Step 3: Set an action

Now that the first part of our automation (trigger + condition) is ready, it is time to pick an action for it! To choose an action, click on the grey "Then do this" field. From here, you can select an action from the options presented in the dropdown or by clicking on "More options".  

For our automation, we chose the "notify someone" action, as below:

Now it is time to finalize the selected action! To customize the exact action that will occur, click into the underlined field(s). In our case, we'll use the "notify" field to customize the notification message that will be sent, and then we'll choose who will receive this automatic notification by clicking into the "someone" field!

And voila, our automation is now ready! By selecting the blue "Create Automation" button, the automation is now good to go. With this in place, every time that the "Contract" Status Column is given the "Signed" label, the Sales manager will instantly receive a notification about it. 🎉

Tip:  You can add multiple different actions onto your automation recipe! We'll go over how this can be done shortly. 

Multi-step automations

If you're looking to create longer and more complex automation flows, you can add multiple different actions onto a single automation recipe! To do this, simply click on the plus sign to the right of the action you already set, choose the additional action, and then fill out the underlined fields.

You can continue adding more and more actions to a single recipe, as you'd wish!

• Status change
• Recurring tasks
• Date reminders
• Item creation  
• Move item (within a board) 
• Cross-board 
• Subitems
• Dependencies 
• Custom recipes

Edit, delete, template, or duplicate an automation

To edit the way you've configured your automation recipe, click on the three dot menu and press "Edit Automation" as below. Clicking on this will open up the automation editor where you can add or remove conditions and actions, or reconfigure your recipe as you wish!

• Duplicate an automation

You can also choose to duplicate an automation from the same three-dot menu by pressing on "Duplicate Automation"! Clicking on this will open up the automation editor where you can edit the automation if you wish. To complete the duplication, make sure to select on the blue "Create Automation" button and you'll be good to go!

Tip: Automations can also be duplicated across boards and templates as long as they are toggled on in the Board Automations section!

• Save an automation recipe as a template

You can save your own custom recipe as a template and make it available for anyone to use in your monday.com account. To do so, click on the three-dot menu to the right of the automation, select "Save as a template", give it a name and click "Create Template" to save it!

• Delete unwanted automations

Should you wish to delete an automation recipe, you can also do so from the same menu by clicking on "Delete Automation" and then "Delete Permanently".

• Trigger rate limit:
  There are limitations on the number of times a single recipe can trigger per minute. When these limits are hit, a bell notification will be sent to the recipe creator as well as the recipe in question will be disabled.

• Action rate limit:
  There are limitations on the number of of actions that can run on a single recipe per minute. When these limits are hit, a bell notification will be sent to the recipe creator and not all actions will run.