With Spreadsheet.com's native automations, you can quickly and easily automate repetitive work and integrate with other popular work tools.

For example, you can create automations to:

• Notify task owners 2 days before each task’s start date
• Send a Slack notification to the entire team when a deal is closed
• Move a row to a different worksheet when a ticket is archived

Automations can be created by anyone. You don’t need to know how to write code or create complicated scripts.

Only Managers and Editors in a workbook can see or add automations. Automations are not private to one user but can be seen and edited by every manager or editor in a workbook.

How to Create a New Automation

To create an automation click the Automations button in the toolbar.

This will open the Automations dialog, where you can browse through a library of automation recipes. Recipes are ready-to-use automation templates to help kickstart your workflow.

Some pre-configured automation recipes include:

• Send a custom notification to Spreadsheet.com users when a date arrives
• Create, update, copy, or move a row from one worksheet to another when a column value changes
• Send a notification to Slack or Microsoft Teams when a column value changes
• Send an email from your Gmail account when a Form is submitted

To begin making an automation from scratch, click the blue + Create from scratch button in the left-hand panel.

Visit our Automations Library to learn more about connecting Spreadsheet.com with other apps and services.

Configuring Your Automations

Triggers, Actions, and Conditions

Selecting an automation recipe or opting to make one from scratch will open Spreadsheet.com's visual workflow editor where you can configure and customize your new automation. Each automation always has one Trigger block and one or more Action blocks. The trigger block determines when the automation will run, and the action blocks define the actions that will be performed.

In the example below, changing the "Status" of a column to "Delayed" will trigger the action, specified as sending a notification email to the task owner.

You can add complexity to your automations with conditional logic by adding a condition block. To do so, click the gray circle between the trigger and action blocks and select "Condition" from the Choose a Block menu.

In the example below, we've modified our first automation to only trigger a notification when the "Priority" of the column is marked with a flag icon.

Each action block can have multiple actions and you can reorder them to determine the execution sequence. In the example below, we've further modified our original action to not only notify the task owner but another user too, as well as change the "% Complete" column to 100%.

For more information about triggers and actions, check out our articles on trigger types, Spreadsheet.com standard action types, and actions that integrate with other applications.

Notifications

Custom notification messages and emails can include row data by inserting column placeholders in the subject and message body. To insert row data in notifications, click the square plus icon on the right side of the relevant field, or type the column name in brackets.

Rows in Automations

When creating, moving, copying, or updating rows in an automation, a row mapper dialog provides an easy way to map data from the source row to the target – even when mapping data across worksheets in different workbooks:

Validation and Testing

When you save your automation, Spreadsheet.com will automatically run a validation test to make sure that your automation will function properly. Alternatively, you can opt to manually test your automation at any time. Both can be accessed from the upper right corner of the automation configuration dialog.

If the validation fails, Spreadsheet.com will highlight the block where the automation failed. You can see exactly what conditions the automation failed on by mousing over the red triangle icon in the top right corner of the automation block.

When you test an automation, you can see the results of the test by opening the Test run log from the right hand side of the automations dialog.

Managing Your Automations

You can view and manage all of your worksheet's automations from the Worksheet Automations tab in the automations dialog.

Use the checkmark box (1) to toggle each automation on or off, or view a log of the automation's run history by clicking the time machine icon (2). Additional settings like editing, copying, and deleting automations can be accessed by clicking on the three-dot icon (3) on the right hand side of the automation.

Automation Activity and Run History

You can see a full history of your workbook's automation activity from the Automation Activity tab in the automations dialog.

In addition to a run log documenting each time an automation is triggered, this tab also displays information about your workspace's automation quota usage.

Automation run history is a premium feature available on Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans. To learn more about Spreadsheet.com's paid plans, see our suite of articles on Billing, Payment, and Credit.

Read on to learn more about creating automations, setting up recurring automations, managing your existing automations, and more.