Control when automations are triggered in your process

The trigger is what causes an automation cell to activate (to go from pending to in progress). For any automation cell in an Onalu table, when its trigger conditions are met, the automation will active. You can configure any cell’s automation and trigger conditions in its field settings.

Frequency Options

Never (manually trigger)

The automation will only be run when you or an Onalu teammate manually presses the "Run Automation" button.

The first time

The automation will only be run once. The automation will be run the first time the conditions you set up (see below) are met

Every time

The automation will be run every time the conditions you set up (see below) are met. Note that if an automation is in progress (not completed), and the conditions are met again, the automation will not trigger again. Another way to think about this is that the trigger will only active if the field is pending or completed.

Condition Configuration

You can configure a trigger to active the automation when conditions are met. You can use a formula to express conditions, or you can use the smart trigger that automatically infers when to trigger.

Smart Trigger

The smart trigger is designed to infer which references are required before the field triggers. It's a reasonable default that you should use unless you need specific trigger logic (in this case, you should use a formula).

The smart trigger will only activate the field when:

1. The automation is fully configured. All required settings (for example, the approver in the Approval automation or the target URL in the Call API automation) are configured
2. Required references have values. If you use a reference in an automation, the smart trigger will trigger when all of the required references have values. For example, you have a two fields in an Onalu table, one called "Item Price" and one called "Department" and you reference in an Approval automation field. "Item Price" is required but "Department" is not. The smart trigger will activate the Approval automation when "Item Price" has a value, even if "Department" does not have a value because "Department" is not required.

Use a formula

You can also build a custom expression with a formula for more granular control on automation triggering.