Automation for Column Update Does Not Work When Record Is Deleted in Child Table

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
1

Hello Team,

I have several tables to track employee salaries: PayStubs (parent), Cash, and Bank (children). When we pay employees, the “paid” column in PayStubs gets updated via a bot. This works fine when I add or change a record, but the bot doesn’t seem to work when a record is deleted in a child table.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

San

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2

An automation’s event that is triggered by changes in one table will never be triggered by changes in another table, even if the other table is a child table.

Create an automation triggered by changes in the child table.

3

Thanks for you response. I think automation is on the child table.

  1. Any changes Cash Table event is trigger:

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SM_LEARN_0-1679009059741.png2460×1102 132 KB

  1. Referenced Table and Rows

SM_LEARN_1-1679009174027.png
SM_LEARN_1-1679009174027.png2479×1108 120 KB

  1. Action perfomed on the PayStub Table to update the PAID column:

SM_LEARN_2-1679009254922.png
SM_LEARN_2-1679009254922.png1870×1078 98.7 KB

Please correct me.

Regards,

San

4

What exactly happens? For example:

  • The automation doesn’t even trigger?
  • The automation triggers but errors out?
  • The automation triggers and completes but doesn’t update the PAID column accurately?

ICYMI: Consider making columns (e.g., PAID) that aggregate (e.g., SUM) data from other tables (e.g., CASH) virtual columns, which always reflect current data, rather than data source columns, which depend on explicitly updating a row.

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5
  • The automation doesn’t even trigger? Yes. Only in Add or Update mode.
  • The automation triggers but errors out? No. I checked monitoring unable to find out error and why in delete mode PAID does not get updated
  • The automation triggers and completes but doesn’t update the PAID column accurately? PAID column accurately updates only in add and update mode.

I will try VC option as per your recommendations. Thank you!

6

What user interaction with the app results in deletion of a CASH table row?

7

In case you wish to pursue the real column update path, You may find the below post thread and solution by @Steve in that post relevant. Please also take look at the below post in that thread. This queries related to other dependent actions not getting executed when triggered by another delete action keep coming up.

Suvrutt_Gurjar_0-1679024443694.png
Suvrutt_Gurjar_0-1679024443694.png1031×417 36 KB

You may also want to take a look at the solution by Steve. Essentially the solution suggests performing dependent update actions first and then perform the main delete.

Auto Action after delete does not get triggered - Google Cloud Community

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