How Do You Run a Sequence of Automations One Right After Another?
How Do You Run a Sequence of Automations One Right After Another?
Mastering Automation Sequences: A Step-by-Step Guide
Automation has revolutionized the way we handle repetitive tasks, making processes more efficient and freeing up valuable time. But what happens when you need to run a sequence of automations one right after another? This is where understanding the different triggers and techniques becomes crucial.
Understanding the Types of Automation Triggers
When it comes to running a sequence of automations, it's essential to distinguish between triggers that pull data from sources like Google Sheets and triggers that are time-based. For data-driven automations, using the loop or list trigger allows you to iterate through rows of data incrementally, ensuring each run processes new information.
Chaining Automations Effectively
To seamlessly chain automations together, you have two primary options. Firstly, adjusting the trigger frequency to run at intervals such as every hour or every five minutes ensures continuous operation. Alternatively, manually starting the automation multiple times by clicking the play steps button can also achieve sequential runs.
Utilizing Web Hooks for Automation Restart
For scenarios where you need an automation to call itself and restart, leveraging web hooks is the way to go. By setting up a web hook trigger and configuring an HTTP step to send a webhook request to the specified URL, you can restart the automation flow from the beginning, creating a self-invoking loop.
Conclusion
Mastering the art of running a sequence of automations one after another requires a deep understanding of triggers, loops, and web hooks. By strategically selecting the right triggers and chaining automations effectively, you can streamline processes and enhance productivity in your workflow.
Video
Steps
Step 1- Select the row from the sheet
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2F18f9ee2d-0215-48ec-a0f9-3b7f15cc5b84%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=03b37085-e551-4c14-984a-138faa33f8a0&cache=v2)
Step 2-Click on Click to edit your list trigger
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2Fdd3d5591-cbf0-4f11-8c23-7217a5e45ae0%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=8a901037-020a-4023-a08a-0485fd5b5d53&cache=v2)
Step 3-This allows to connect the google sheet with No of rows and timer.
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2F9e58dc6b-c0fc-4864-9dc3-de4e8a0b66bf%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=fc3f83c7-8682-4db3-bf62-2052fa5d4910&cache=v2)
Step 4- Click on the Play steps five times
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2Ffb7984c9-8c7b-401e-86b5-c0a2cff466dd%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=f2e0f2ea-18d0-4f48-a37e-3676a6e3635f&cache=v2)
Step 5-Select the webhook trigger
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2F2f28b525-0b8a-4eab-9107-d2aa890df8bb%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=61fc2780-fd08-4f3d-80c4-c73b7e7a615d&cache=v2)
Step 6- Send this data to Webhook and record it
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2F67680b11-16e8-4dc8-9a98-321226b94e95%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=e8520986-bcb7-46aa-9f36-375c86b8d276&cache=v2)
Step 7- Select HTTP request—Select Post—Paste the link and Confirm
![Notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fprod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F933fd0c3-a154-47b4-90fa-73be506fc7f9%2F583334ca-9b52-4df3-ba49-c7f9b9b9c0c7%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=11e026f8-e3d6-4ad2-be44-54d1b0abaf62&cache=v2)
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Okay. So we had a question come in asking us, how do you run a sequence of automations, one right after the other. So there's one very important distinction I want to make, depending on the type of automation that you're running. So if you're running an automation that is supposed to go and pull data from your Google sheet, go run your automation.
And the next time it runs, it moved on to the next rows, et cetera. And it works its way down this list of results. Incrementally. If that's the type of flow that you have, you're going to be wanting to use the loop or list trigger. Same thing. It's the, this is managing your loop for the list trigger here.
What this allows you to do is connect your Google sheet and select how many rows to loop at, at a time. This is going to incrementally move down your list and use the new data In each run.
Otherwise, if we use something like the schedule trigger, which allows us to select one single row, it's always going to run with that row. So that's just one distinction I want to make. If your automation is using data from a Google sheet, you might be using the list trigger. So when it comes to wanting to chain the automation to run, uh, right after another, there's only two really real ways that this automation can make that happen.
You're either going to want to adjust your trigger to run every hour or every five minutes or every 15 minutes so that it constantly runs. Or if you want it to run like five times once, and you're going to manually start it, you can click the play steps button five times. And I'll stop this afterwards to cue five runs worth of your automation.
So what we can do with the list triggers is either turn it on from desktop. By clicking turn on and then turn on from desktop with a trigger that is running frequent enough to constantly run it for us. Or we can click this play steps button a bunch of times to help with that. Alternatively, if we want to make our automation actually call our automation and make it start again, what we can do is, is we can, um, let me select a different automation here.
We can set up our web hook trigger. And this webhook trigger is responsible for starting that automation. We can copy that webhook trigger URL that we have here. Then we can add an HTTP step to the end of our, or a send a webhook step to the end of our automation by clicking the plus and then apps so that we can send, send this data to a webhook, which then restarts this automation since it's being told to start the flow again.
So to do that, we add the HTTP step. And then we select send HTTP request, we're going to enter post. And then the URL is going to be that webhook URL that we copied above for this specific automation. If we needed to specify any body data, you can, uh, but that's not as common for something like this type of a flow that's self invoking itself.
After we set up this HTTP step, that's all we really need to do. This step is good to go, although we should probably fill out the rest of this and remove things that aren't filled. We're now good to go. Clicking test app would start this automation, and then when this automation runs and it hits step 51, It's going to restart the automation again, all over in a different browser, um, run through all of the steps and then recall it again to continue this process.
Now every time that this web hook is called and it starts the automation over again, that's a completely new run. So this browser that we have here for this automation is going to close. And then that web hook that was sent is going to open up a new browser running the automation starting from the very beginning again.