If you set up multiple automations which have actions that compete with each other, you may experience inconsistencies with the way these automations work. Some of your automations will successfully run, while others will fail.

In this article, we'll explore what it means exactly to have competing automations and how you can try to solve it!

 

What are competing automations?

In short, competing automations occur when you have multiple automations with the same trigger (or one automation with multiple actions) where the actions run at the same time and may come in conflict with each other. 

For example, let's say we set up the following two automations on the same board:

1. When status changes to something, archive item
2. When status changes to something, change another status to something.

Because these automations start with the same trigger, "When status changes to something", both of them will run at the same time. As such, it's very likely that at least one of these automations will fail - the second automation may not be able to run due to the fact that the first automation caused that same item to be archived!

 

Triggering competing automations

Now that we understand more about what it means to have competing automations, let's learn about what happens when you trigger them on your board! 

Let's continue with the two automation recipes shown in the example above. If we trigger these automations multiple times by changing the Step 1 status to "Done", some of the automations will work properly, while others will not. When this happens, we'll also receive a notification telling us that our automation has failed:

 

Furthermore, if you go into the automation activity log, you'll also be able to see proof that some of the triggered recipes ran successfully, while others failed. There will also be a red sentence explaining more about why a specific automation recipe failed (in our case it was due to having an archived item on our board). 🙌

 

Examples of competing automations

While there can be multiple different scenarios that lead to competing automations, the main ones involve any "final stage" automation actions which either move an item to another board, archive an item, or fully delete an item. 

With this in mind, you'll find three different scenarios below where automations will be competing with each other and will therefore lead to some of them failing to run:

 

• Scenario 1: One automation moves an item to another board

 

• Scenario 2: One automation archives an item

 

• Scenario 3: One automation fully deletes an item

 

How to solve it

To correct the problem of competing automations, start by deleting the separate automations that are competing with each other. Next, build one single custom automation that accomplishes both actions instead.

For example, the two following automations:

1. When status changes to something, archive item
2. When status changes to something, change another status to something

Can be combined into one custom automation:

1. When status changes to something, then set status to something, and then archive item

 

 

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.