monday.com No Dry-Run Mode for Automations

Automation Pain Point #20 & #21

You need to test an automation before letting it run on live data. Click a button, see what WOULD happen (which email would send, which statuses would change, which boards would update), but don’t actually DO any of it. A dry-run mode. A preview. A sandbox.

Monday.com has no such feature. When you test an automation, it fires for real — emails go to real people, statuses change on live boards, cross-board items get created, and you’re left manually undoing everything if the test wasn’t what you expected.

The only Monday.com-native “test mode” is for emails specifically — you can redirect emails to a test address. But board actions still run live. Change a status during testing? It changes for real. Create an item on another board? It creates for real. There is no rollback, no undo, no “this was just a test” safety net.

This article explains why monday.com’s lack of dry-run testing is a critical gap, what partial workarounds exist, and where BoardBridge has (and hasn’t) solved this problem.

Table of Contents

• The Problem: Testing Fires Real Actions
• What Users Need vs. What Monday.com Offers
• Community Evidence: 3+ Years of Feature Requests
• The Monday.com Partial Solution (Email Test Mode)
• The BoardBridge Approach (Email Test Mode + Logging)
• Why Full Dry-Run Is Hard to Implement
• Workarounds for Testing Board Actions
• FAQ

The Problem: Testing Fires Real Actions

Monday.com automations execute immediately when their trigger fires. There is no “simulation mode” where you can see what would happen without actually doing it.

What This Means in Practice

Scenario 1: Testing an email automation

• You set up an automation: “When status changes to ‘Approved’, send email to client”
• You change an item’s status to “Approved” to test
• The email sends to the real client immediately
• You realize the email template had a typo
• You cannot unsend the email
• The client received a broken email

Scenario 2: Testing a cross-board automation

• You set up: “When button is clicked, create item on Delivery Board”
• You click the button to test
• A real item is created on the Delivery Board
• You realize the column mappings were wrong
• You have to manually delete the test item
• If you test 5 times, you create 5 duplicate items

Scenario 3: Testing a status change automation

• You set up: “When status changes to ‘Complete’, move item to ‘Archive’ group”
• You change an item’s status to “Complete” to test
• The item moves to the Archive group
• Your team sees it in the archive and thinks the project is actually complete
• You have to move it back manually and explain it was just a test

Community Evidence

From a forum thread titled “‘Test Automation’ Function” — 9 replies spanning June 2022 to August 2025 (3+ years, no resolution):

“It would be helpful to be able to test the notification…without having to wait until Friday” — peter.vardy, June 9, 2022

“So annoying to have to recreate the entire automation” — dk_NFroehlich, June 10, 2022

Described pain of managing 20+ action automations without test capability. — psperry, June 9, 2022

“It’s really very difficult to test anything because one has to wait for 1 hour to test a schedule based automation after each change made.” — vparassidis (Vera), July 25, 2023

Asked for status update after 2+ years. — connectrtem, February 14, 2025

Posted tumbleweed emoji (suggesting abandonment after 3+ years). — dk_NFroehlich, August 26, 2025

Monday.com official response: NONE in 3+ years.

What Users Need vs. What Monday.com Offers

What Users Need

Feature	Why It Matters
Email dry-run mode	Preview email content without sending to real recipients
Board action dry-run mode	See which statuses would change, which items would be created, without actually doing it
Execution log preview	See the step-by-step sequence of actions that WOULD run
Rollback capability	Undo a test that ran on live data
Sandbox workspace	Separate test environment that doesn’t touch production boards

What Monday.com Offers

Feature	Support
Email dry-run mode	⚠️ Partial — can redirect emails to test address, but subject is prefixed “[TEST]” and original recipients are stripped (can break testing)
Board action dry-run mode	❌ Not supported — status changes, item creation, cross-board updates run live during testing
Execution log preview	❌ Not supported — no “what would happen” preview
Rollback capability	⚠️ Partial — Activity Log allows 7-day undo window for manual changes, but NOT for automation-triggered changes
Sandbox workspace	❌ Not supported — no concept of test vs. production environments

From the official automation documentation:

No mention of test mode, sandbox, preview, or dry run.

The documentation assumes all automations run on live data.

Community Evidence: 3+ Years of Feature Requests

Thread 1: “Test Automation” Function (3+ years unresolved)

Already covered above. No Monday.com staff response in over 3 years.

Thread 2: Sandbox for Admins

From a November 2023 forum thread titled “Sandbox for Admins”:

“I would like to be able to have a workspace that is fully functional but does not take actions such as notifying people, etc.” — HAMondayAdmin (Andrea), October 31, 2023

Monday.com staff (BiancaT) responded:

“I understand where you’re coming from and happy to take this feedback to the relevant team.”

Offered to convert to a feature request. No implementation.

Thread 3: Best Practices for Duplicate Boards for Testing

From a January 2024 forum thread titled “Best Practices for creating a duplicate board for testing changes”:

“I have a need to create a ‘Sandbox’ or copy of my current environment. This will allow me to test out automations prior to rolling them out in production.” — sharonmartinko, January 18, 2024

“Did you ever figure this out? Currently, I am manually duplicating the boards as well to test :s” — dan13l, March 2, 2025

Monday.com official response: NONE. Over a year later, users are still manually duplicating boards for testing.

Thread 4: Developer Sandbox

From a November 2021 forum thread titled “Developer Sandbox”:

“I need to be able to test that my integration works with all the enterprise features.” — works, November 9, 2021

Monday.com staff (AlexSavchuk) provided a developer account signup link but confirmed:

“It won’t include some of the Enterprise-only access features, like item viewing permissions.”

Even the developer sandbox is incomplete — it doesn’t support testing Enterprise features.

The Monday.com Partial Solution (Email Test Mode)

Monday.com DOES have one test-related feature: email test mode (available at the organization level).

How It Works

1. Navigate to Admin → General Settings
2. Enable “Email Test Mode”
3. Enter a test email address (e.g., test@yourcompany.com)

When enabled:

• ALL automation-triggered emails are redirected to the test address
• Email subjects are prefixed with [TEST]
• CC and BCC recipients are stripped (emails go ONLY to the test address)
• The original recipient list is shown in the email body for reference

What This Solves

• Prevents emails from going to real clients during testing
• Lets you verify email content (subject, body, merge variables)

What It DOESN’T Solve

Problem 1: Board actions still run live

Email test mode only affects EMAILS. If your automation also:

• Changes status columns → still happens
• Creates items on other boards → still happens
• Moves items to groups → still happens
• Updates date columns → still happens

You get test emails, but the board changes are real.

Problem 2: No per-automation toggle

Email test mode is workspace-wide. You cannot enable it for one automation while leaving others in production mode. Either ALL automations send test emails, or NONE do.

Problem 3: CC/BCC are stripped

The whole point of testing is to verify the email looks correct — including the CC/BCC list. But test mode REMOVES them. So you cannot test:

• Whether the right people are CC’d
• Whether conditional CC rules work correctly
• Whether BCC recipients are included

BoardBridge Email Test Mode (Improved)

BoardBridge’s email test mode addresses these gaps:

What we changed:

• Per-automation toggle: Each automation can be individually set to test mode (not workspace-wide)
• Original recipients shown in body: The test email includes the full to/cc/bcc list that WOULD have been used
• Subject prefixed clearly: [TEST - Outbound Travel Email] instead of generic [TEST]
• BCC preserved (optional): Configurable — you can choose whether BCC should be included in test mode or stripped

What we DIDN’T solve:

• Board actions still run live — if your automation creates items, changes statuses, or updates columns, those actions execute normally even in test mode

The BoardBridge Approach (Email Test Mode + Logging)

Here’s what BoardBridge provides for testing: Source: BoardBridge Product Documentation

1. Email Test Mode (Per-Automation)

How to enable:

• Open the automation settings
• Toggle “Email Test Mode” ON
• Enter a test email address (defaults to org-level test address if configured)

What happens when the automation fires:

• Email is redirected to the test address
• Subject is prefixed: [TEST - Travel Email - Outbound]
• Original recipients shown in email body:
• To: client@example.com
• CC: logistics@yourcompany.com, coordinator@yourcompany.com
• BCC: admin@yourcompany.com
• Full email content is rendered (with real merge variables from the item)
• Email log shows isTestMode: true for audit

Board actions:

• Still execute normally (status changes, item creation, etc.)

2. Detailed Execution Logging

Every automation run is logged with full details:

Log Field	Example
Automation name	“Send Travel Email (Button)”
Trigger type	Button click
Item ID	147
Board name	“Event Travel”
Timestamp	June 15, 2026 10:23 AM
Actions executed	Send email, Update status, Update date
Email details	To, CC, BCC, subject, template used
Status changes	“Travel Email Status” → “Sent”
Test mode	Yes/No
Success/Failure	Success (or error details)

Why this matters:

• You can review exactly what happened after a test run
• You can see which actions executed and in what order
• You can identify issues (e.g., “status updated but email failed”)

3. Disabled Automations (Manual Testing Control)

BoardBridge automations can be disabled without deleting them.

How it works:

• Open automation settings
• Toggle “Enabled” OFF
• The automation appears in the list but does NOT fire

Why this helps testing:

1. Disable the automation
2. Click the button or change the status (trigger fires but automation doesn’t run)
3. Review the item data to verify it’s ready
4. Enable the automation
5. Trigger it again (now it runs for real)

This lets you test the trigger without executing the actions.

Why Full Dry-Run Is Hard to Implement

Here’s the honest truth: BoardBridge does not have full dry-run mode either.

The Technical Challenge

Dry-run mode requires:

1. Simulating API calls without executing them — monday.com’s API doesn’t support “preview mode”
2. Predicting side effects — if Action 1 creates an item, Action 2 needs the new item’s ID, but in dry-run that ID doesn’t exist yet
3. Maintaining a parallel state — the system needs to track “what would be” vs. “what is” for every column, item, and board
4. Rollback capability — if a test runs live, you need to undo every API call (status changes, item creation, etc.)

What We Focused On Instead

Rather than building an imperfect dry-run system, we focused on:

• Email test mode (prevents emails from going to real people)
• Pre-condition checks (blocks automations when required data is missing)
• Detailed logging (full audit trail of what happened)
• Idempotency (prevent duplicate actions when automations fire twice)
• Admin notifications (alerts when automations fail or are blocked)

These features minimize the NEED for dry-run testing by making automations more reliable and easier to debug.

Workarounds for Testing Board Actions

If you need to test board actions (status changes, item creation) without affecting production data, here are the best workarounds:

Workaround 1: Duplicate Board for Testing

How it works:

1. Duplicate your production board
2. Name it “Test – [Board Name]”
3. Set up the same automations on the test board
4. Run your tests on test items
5. Once verified, delete the test board

Pros:

• Completely isolated from production
• Can test freely without risk

Cons:

• Automations don’t automatically copy (you have to recreate them)
• Cross-board automations still point to production boards (you’d need to update every target board reference)
• Time-consuming setup

Workaround 2: Test Group on Production Board

How it works:

1. Create a “Test Items” group on your production board
2. Add test items to that group
3. Run automations on test items
4. Manually clean up after testing

Pros:

• No board duplication needed
• Automations work as-is

Cons:

• Test items live alongside production items (risk of confusion)
• Manual cleanup required
• Cross-board automations still affect production boards

Workaround 3: Use Automation Logs to Audit

How it works:

1. Run the automation on a real item
2. Immediately check the automation log / activity log
3. If something went wrong, manually undo the changes via Activity Log (7-day window)

Pros:

• No test environment needed
• Works with existing setup

Cons:

• Still fires live actions (not a true dry-run)
• Relies on quick manual undo
• 7-day undo window only

What This Means for Your Workflows

Dry-run testing remains an unsolved problem across most automation platforms — including monday.com and BoardBridge. The workaround is to focus on features that reduce the need for testing: pre-condition checks ensure automations only fire when data is complete, email test mode prevents emails from going to real people, and detailed logging provides full visibility into what happened.

For teams building complex automations, the best practice is:

1. Use email test mode to verify email content
2. Use pre-condition checks to block automations when data is missing
3. Use duplicate boards for testing board actions (status changes, item creation)
4. Use detailed logs to audit what happened after each automation run

It’s not perfect, but it’s the most reliable approach available today.

BoardBridge — Form & Workflow Automation for monday.com handles email test mode, pre-condition checks, and detailed logging out of the box. If you need better visibility and control over automation testing, it might be worth a look.

Meta Description

monday.com has no dry-run mode for automations. Use email test mode, detailed logging, pre-condition checks, and duplicate boards to test safely instead.

Related Articles

For more automation safety:

• Pre-Condition Checks: Block Automations When Data Is Missing
• Compound Conditions: AND/OR Logic for Multiple Triggers
• One Trigger, Multiple Actions (Action Chaining)

Book a free consultation to discuss automation testing strategies: https://calendly.com/rp-spaceo/call-with-rakesh-est-timezone