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Start when a field, status, assignee or relation changes

The trigger A field changes starts the automation when a field you watch changes on a record. It covers the status field, the assignees, and relations between records.

6 minUpdated Oct 27, 2026

Open in Corteksa

Before you start · for owners and managers

Permission to edit workflows

You need: Permission to edit workflows

Steps

Choose the trigger A field changes and the unit.

Under Which fields?, choose one or more fields to watch. You can choose the assignees field or a relation to another unit.

Add a condition on the new value in Settings → Only records that….

For example: “Status is Won”. Without a condition, the automation runs on any new value.

Add the steps, and try a Practice run.

Common cases

You want

Set it up like this

When the status changes to “Won”

Watch the status field, and add the condition “Status is Won”

When the assignee changes

Watch the Assignees field; the assignees condition compares people

When the record is linked to a record from another unit

Watch the relation to that unit

When any of several fields is edited

Choose all the fields; a change in one of them is enough

There’s no separate trigger for a status change. Use A field changes on the status field.

Special variables

{{old_value}} is the previous value, {{new_value}} is the new value, and {{admin_name}} is the name of who changed it. See Variables: put record data in messages and fields.

What doesn’t trigger it

Bulk editing a field from the table doesn’t trigger it. Bulk assigning triggers it for every record whose assignee changed.

A change written by another automation or by automatic distribution doesn’t trigger it, to prevent loops.

Saving the record without changing the watched field doesn’t trigger it.

If something goes wrong

What you see

Why

What to do

It didn’t run when the field changed

The field didn’t really change, or an automation or a bulk edit changed it.

Open Follow the run log, and retry or resume from the failed step; a run that was turned down shows as Skipped with the reason. For automatic changes, use Run another automation from inside an automation.

It runs on every edit instead of the value you want

There’s no condition on the new value.

Add a condition. See Conditions: operators, relative dates, messages and language.

A real example

Shield Security Co.

The situation

An accepted quote needs a PDF contract that reaches the client right away.

What they did

The trigger A field changes on “Quote status”.
A condition: the status equals “Accepted”.
A Generate a document step from the contract template, then Send an email with the document attached.

The result

The contract reaches the client within a minute of the quote being accepted.

A made-up company, to show the idea. The numbers are rounded.