Trigger automation by update in calculation field

[RichardHedger]

Is it possible to trigger an automation through a change in a calculation field without a manual update of the record ?

Should the automation below work (without manual update of the record) ?

[Jason]

@RichardHedger

I am not sure if this is what you mean

https://share.cleanshot.com/DZZ1r0hX
Also in the triger were it says any field this can be changed to one or more fields I would strongly recommend moving your conditional filter to that.

[RichardHedger]

Thanks - yes, that’s what I mean. For some reason my automation is not being triggered with a change in the calculation field. I will study it a bit more.

[RichardHedger]

You have a change in the relationships on the record which is acting as the ‘update’, whereas I don’t have any external change on the record apart from the calculation field change. I suppose this is the difference.

[Jason]

Yes this probably it are you changing the calc field based on a date or something? the way i understand it is that there has to be an actual record change to trigger the calculation field update and therefore trigger the automation (I may well not be saying that correctly).

This:

Calculation with today

As I understand, calculation fields will only be triggered when a source field changes. So no change to have some calculation with e.g. “today” included as the only variable that changes. Is the only way to run a daily automation for that task? Or is there a more economical way to to that?

Talks a bit about it.

[dirk_s]

Again there is a situation where I miss that calculation field changes may be triggers:

Scenario: I want to know, when a task is finished. I don’t know the last loop.

Desired solution: I know the total amount of loops required, I write it in a total field. I connect the resulting records with the sync record. I count the incoming relations and once the numbers are equal, the calculation field flips to “done”.

let total = @totalJiraIssues;
let finished = @All of issueId.length;
let difference = 0;

difference = (total && total !== 0 && total === finished) ? "done" : "active";

The field flipped to status “done”, but the automation wasn’t triggered. Because both total already updated at the start and field “finished” are calculation fields.

I can only think about a more inefficient workaround. Using the automation to move a counter, hoping it will not create a race condition.

Update: it will … trying to increase a numeric field by several automations didn’t work. Not sure at what time it will pull the current value. But I wasn’t able to count up correctly.