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

In this article, we will explore what it really means 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) that are triggered at the same time and can cause conflicts with each other.

For example, let’s say we have the following two automations defined on the same board:

1. When the status changes to something , I will assemble an item.
2. When the status changes to something , change another status to something.

Because these automations start from the same trigger, “when the status changes to something,” they will both run at the same time. Therefore, it is very likely that at least one of these automations will fail – the second automation may not run because the first automation caused the same item to be archived!

Tip: Want to see more examples of competing automation recipes? Check out this section of the article below!

Running competing automations

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

Let’s continue with the two automation recipes shown in the example above. If we make these automations run multiple times by changing status 1 to “Done”, some of the automations will run properly, while others will not. When this happens, we will also get an alert telling us that our automation failed:

Additionally, if you go into the automation activity log, you can also see proof that some of the recipes that were run successfully worked, while others failed. There will also be a red sentence that explains more about why a specific automation failed (in our case it was because we had an archived item on the board).

Examples of competing automations

While there can be a variety of 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.

Assuming this, you will find three different scenarios below where the automations will compete with each other and therefore lead to some of them failing during the run process:

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

• Scenario 2: One automation extends an item

• Scenario 3: One automation deletes an item completely

How to solve this?

To fix the problem of competing automations, start by deleting the separate automations that are competing with each other. Then, build a single, customized automation that completes both actions.

For example, the following two automations:

1. When the status changes to something , I will assemble an item.
2. When the status changes to something , change another status to something.

Capabilities can be combined into one customized automation:

1. When the status changes to something , then put a status on something, then I will assemble an item

Note: Make sure to add each action in the “last” step (Move Item to Clipboard, Archive Item, or Delete Item) as one of the last actions of the customized automation.

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