Workflow Automations Run Unreliably

svamann

We've been having serious trouble with our Workflow Automations. We rely on these Automations doing their work, but sometimes they fail or just don't run and we're not even notified.

Here's scenarios where this happens:

• A user forwards an email via Smart BCC, where one or multiple contacts do not yet exist in Pipedrive. Pipedrive creates the contacts. We have automations in place that trigger on "Create Person" and fill some fields. Those automations are sometimes stopped (we see that in the Automation History) and sometimes don't trigger at all.
• We import multiple new contacts. The same automations as above apply, but trigger only for some of the contacts.
• My Google calendar gets synced to Pipedrive (2-way-sync). I have an automation that adjust these. This automation sometimes doesn't trigger at all.

Here's what we learned in hours of support discussion:

• Workflow Automation are apparently limited to 1 execution per automation per minute. This is not documented anywhere... the 2nd, 3rd... execution are "stopped". You can see that in the Automation History, but otherwise it happens silently. And even in the History we cannot see which record triggered the stopped automation.
• When we merge contacts, this does not trigger "Update Person" automatons at all.
• When multiple trigger events are caused by the same event (e.g., multiple persons created by one email via SmartBCC or multiple persons created/updated by one import), Workflow Automations only ever see the first trigger event. All other events are silently ignored.

Please Pipedrive, automations need to run reliably AND notify me about any errors. Otherwise they are worthless!

With the above limitations, we always need to manually double check and clean up. So much for saving time with automations...

What's your plans on fixing that?

Manuel Oliveira

Hi @Sven Amann_76110 , I'm sorry to learn about the issues you've been having with your workflow automations.

I can say that we have some exciting things coming up for workflow automations, how they are managed on your account and if they run successfully or not, very soon! I'm hoping it will make your life easier. Be sure to keep an eye in the What's New section and the latest announcements, we will keep you posted!

Syberkitten

Hi

I have a somewhat related issue, when importing contacts from a spread sheet,

we have an automation that should be triggered for every person added,

it is not triggered at all, and as such we are left with contacts that have no deals

attached, and since every contact gets it's own specific deal, it leaves

us to do a lot of manual work to add every person a deal.

Perhaps we are missing something, but why does import not trigger person created trigger for automation?

Manuel Oliveira

Hi @Syberkitten , that is deliberate. When you import data into your account, that does not trigger automations.