monday.com One Trigger Multiple Actions: Action Chaining

Automation Pain Point #9: Limited Action Chaining

You need a button click to trigger a sequence of actions—send an email, update three status columns, and create an item on another board.

monday.com’s button column can trigger automation recipes with multiple actions. That part is fine. But here’s the problem: actions don’t share data with each other, and cross-board actions don’t integrate well with email actions in the same recipe.

The result? You end up with fragile multi-automation setups that fire at unpredictable times, or you give up and build workarounds that make maintenance a nightmare.

Meta Description

Chain multiple monday.com automation actions in sequence—button click to email to status update to cross-board creation with data passing between steps.

Related Articles

For related automation features:

• Compound Conditions: AND/OR Logic for Multiple Triggers
• Conditional Email Templates Based on Column Values
• Button Click: Send Form Link and Update Status

Users who need multi-step sequences often discover that native automations either don’t support the specific action combination they need, or the actions fire in unpredictable order with no way to handle failures midstream.

This article explains how action chaining works in monday.com, where it breaks down, and how BoardBridge handles sequential multi-action workflows.

Table of Contents

• The Problem: Limited Button Automation Actions
• What Monday.com Supports
• Real-World Example: Event Confirmation Workflow
• How BoardBridge Handles Action Chaining
• Sequential Execution and Best-Effort Continuation
• When to Use Multiple Actions vs. Multiple Automations
• Common Action Sequences
• FAQ

The Problem: Limited Button Automation Actions

Monday.com’s automation builder DOES let you add multiple actions to a single recipe. When you create an automation, you can click the “+” button to add more actions below the first one.

But here’s where it gets restrictive:

Button Column Limitations

From community threads and official documentation [Source: https://community.monday.com/t/introducing-the-button-column/10279]:

“Buttons can trigger ONE automation recipe. Multi-step requires multiple separate automations or workarounds.” — Community summary from multiple threads (2020-2022)

While technically you can add multiple actions within that ONE recipe, the button column itself can only connect to one automation. So if you need five different button-triggered workflows on the same board, you need five separate button columns.

Cross-Board Action Limitations

From a forum thread titled “Custom Automations and Action Button / Command Button Column” [Source: https://community.monday.com/t/custom-automations-and-action-button-command-button-column/2530]:

“Make it compatible with Subitem automation recipes (example create subitem instead of item)” and “The create item functions doesn’t allow to select or concatenate and put original field content on new item.” — hlopezvc, August 11, 2020

Monday.com staff (Becca) confirmed the button column was released but did not address the advanced functionality requests. Over 2 years later, these limitations remain.

What Actions Can’t Combine Well

• Email + cross-board item creation: Email actions don’t have access to the newly created item’s ID from a prior “create item on another board” action
• Multiple status updates + notification: Status changes made by automation don’t trigger subsequent automations in the same flow (to prevent infinite loops)
• Button click + conditional email: No conditional branching within a single recipe (see Monday.com Conditional Automation If/Else for more on this limitation)

What Monday.com Supports

Native Multi-Action Capabilities

Monday.com automations CAN chain multiple actions in a single recipe. For example:

Recipe: When status changes to “Approved”

• Action 1: Notify person
• Action 2: Move item to “Approved” group
• Action 3: Create item on “Archive” board

This works fine for linear, non-dependent actions — actions that don’t need data from each other.

What Doesn’t Work

• Using results from earlier actions in later ones: You can’t reference the item ID created in Action 1 within the email body of Action 2
• Conditional continuation: If Action 1 fails, Actions 2 and 3 still attempt to run (no failure handling)
• Cross-automation chaining: An automation-triggered status change does NOT trigger other automations (by design, to prevent loops)

From a forum thread titled “Automation by column change does not work if the change was by automation” [Source: https://community.monday.com/t/automation-by-column-change-does-not-work-if-the-change-was-by-automation/69289]:

“When an item is created in the board NEW an automation is activated to connect the item…On the board CURRENT there is an automation that suppose to be activated by column change…It does not get activated by the change that happens with the automation.” — elromlu, October 26, 2023

Monday.com Implementation Consultant GiannisKoukounas confirmed: This is unsupported behavior. Automations do not trigger other automations.

Real-World Example: Event Confirmation Workflow

Here’s a workflow from a client managing live event logistics.

The Scenario

When the event coordinator clicks the “Send Show Form” button on an event item, the system needs to:

1. Send a personalized email to the client with a unique form link
2. Update the “Show Form Status” column to “Sent”
3. Update the “Last Contact Date” column to today’s date
4. CC the logistics team on the email

The Monday.com Approach

You’d set up a button column with a connected automation:

Trigger: Button clicked Actions:

1. Send an email (but NO CC support — see Monday.com Button Automation Send Email with CC)
2. Change “Show Form Status” to “Sent”
3. Change “Last Contact Date” to “Today”

Problems:

• No CC — monday.com button-triggered emails don’t support CC recipients
• No personalized form URL — you can’t insert a unique-per-item form link in the email template (monday.com’s WorkForms don’t support per-item URLs)
• No failure handling — if the email fails to send (invalid recipient address), the status columns still update, making it look like the email went out when it didn’t

The BoardBridge Approach

Trigger: Button clicked (same board, same item)

Actions (executed sequentially):

1. Build the form URL using the item ID (e.g., https://forms.boardbridge.app/f/show-form/12345)
2. Send the email with:

• Recipient from the “Client Email” column
• CC group: “Logistics Team” (multiple addresses)
• Email body includes the personalized form link from Step 1

1. Update “Show Form Status” to “Sent”
2. Update “Last Contact Date” to today’s timestamp

Sequential execution: Each action sees the results of prior actions. The email in Action 2 can reference the form URL generated in Action 1.

Best-effort continuation: If Action 2 (email send) fails due to an invalid recipient address, BoardBridge logs the error, skips the status updates (Actions 3-4), and sends an admin notification with the details. Your board doesn’t show a false “Sent” status when the email never went out.

How BoardBridge Handles Action Chaining

Sequential Execution

Actions run in the order you define them, one at a time. Each action completes before the next one starts.

Why this matters: Some actions produce data that later actions need. For example:

• Action 1: Create an item on the Production board → returns the new item’s ID
• Action 2: Update a “Production Item Link” column on the original board with that ID

In native monday.com, you’d need TWO separate automations (with unpredictable timing). In BoardBridge, it’s one automation with two sequential actions.

Results Available to Later Actions

BoardBridge stores the output of each action in memory during the automation run. Later actions can reference those outputs.

Example:

• Action 1: Generate a unique form URL for this item
• Action 2: Send an email with that URL embedded in the body
• Action 3: Update a “Form Link” column with the same URL for record-keeping

All three actions use the same URL generated in Action 1.

Best-Effort Continuation on Failure

If an action fails midstream, BoardBridge:

1. Logs the error with full details (action type, item ID, error message, timestamp)
2. Stops execution of remaining actions (to prevent cascading failures)
3. Sends an admin notification to a designated email address or Slack channel

This prevents the “status updated but email never sent” problem common in monday.com workflows.

Example:

• Action 1: Send email → Fails (recipient address is invalid)
• Action 2: Update status to “Sent” → Skipped (because Action 1 failed)
• Admin receives: “Email send failed for Event #12345 – Client Wedding. Reason: Invalid recipient email ‘client@example’. Status column NOT updated.”

You can then fix the email address and manually re-trigger the automation via the button.

When to Use Multiple Actions vs. Multiple Automations

Use One Automation with Multiple Actions When:

• Actions are logically part of the same workflow (e.g., “send confirmation email” and “update confirmation status”)
• Actions need to execute in a specific sequence
• Later actions depend on results from earlier ones (e.g., form URL generated in Action 1 used in Action 2’s email)
• You want failure handling — if one action fails, the rest should not run

Use Separate Automations When:

• Actions are triggered by different events (e.g., one on button click, one on status change)
• Actions are independent and can run in parallel
• You need different conditional logic for each action (e.g., “send email A if dropdown = X, send email B if dropdown = Y”)

Common Action Sequences

Here are five multi-action workflows we see clients set up frequently:

1. Button Click → Send Form Link + Update Status

Actions:

1. Generate unique form URL for this item
2. Send email with form URL to recipient (from column)
3. CC logistics team
4. Update “Form Sent Status” to “Sent”
5. Update “Last Contact Date” to today

Use case: Client onboarding, vendor data collection, event RSVPs

2. Status Change → Create Item on Another Board + Link It Back

Actions:

1. Create item on the Production board (with column values from the source item)
2. Store the newly created item’s ID
3. Update a “Production Board Link” column on the source item with that ID

Use case: Cross-board project handoffs (Sales → Delivery, Booking → Logistics)

3. Button Click → Conditional Email + Cross-Board Update

Actions:

1. Check the “Trip Type” dropdown value
2. If “Outbound”, send Outbound Travel Email
3. If “Return”, send Return Travel Email
4. Update “Travel Email Status” to “Sent”
5. Update “Travel Booking Date” on the Travel board

Use case: Event travel coordination, multi-stage project workflows

4. Form Submission → Update Item + Trigger Follow-Up Email

Actions:

1. Update all form field values on the target item
2. Update “Form Submitted Date” column
3. Check if all required fields are now filled
4. If complete, send a “Thank You” email
5. If incomplete, send a “Please Complete” email

Use case: Multi-page forms, conditional follow-ups based on form data

5. Button Click → Send Multiple Emails with One CC Thread

Actions:

1. Build form URLs for Show Form, Teebox Form, and Production Form
2. Compose one email containing all three form links
3. Send to client (from “Client Email” column)
4. CC “Event Coordinators” group
5. Update “All Forms Sent Status” to “Sent”

Use case: Consolidated client communication (one email instead of three separate messages)

What This Means for Your Workflows

Action chaining turns button clicks and status changes into complete workflows. Instead of managing five separate automations that fire at unpredictable times, you define one automation with a clear sequence of actions — and the system executes them in order, handles failures gracefully, and gives you full visibility into what happened.

For teams coordinating multi-step processes (client onboarding, event logistics, approval workflows, vendor management), this is the difference between automations that feel brittle and automations that just work.

BoardBridge — Form & Workflow Automation for monday.com handles sequential multi-action workflows out of the box. If your processes require more than simple “notify person” automations, it might be worth a look.

FAQ

Can monday.com automations include multiple actions?

Yes. One automation can include multiple actions (send email, change status, create item). However, the actions execute in an uncontrolled order, and later actions can’t access data from earlier ones.

What happens if one action fails?

In native monday.com, all actions attempt to run regardless. If action 2 fails, action 3 still runs. If action 3 fails, you might end up with statuses updated but emails not sent. No rollback.

Does BoardBridge execute actions in order?

Yes. Actions run sequentially, one at a time. Each action completes before the next one starts. Later actions can reference results from earlier ones.

Can I send an email with data created by an earlier action?

Yes. If Action 1 creates an item and generates a URL, Action 2 can embed that URL in the email body.

What if required data is missing when the button is clicked?

BoardBridge checks pre-conditions before any actions run. If required data is missing, the entire automation stops and an admin notification is sent. No partial execution.

How many actions can one automation include?

No hard limit, but we recommend keeping it under 5-7 for maintainability. Each action adds complexity and potential failure points.

Can I use action chaining with status change triggers?

Yes. Action chaining works with all trigger types: button clicks, status changes, form submissions, date-based triggers, webhooks, etc.

Do chained actions consume more monday.com automation quota?

No. BoardBridge automations run on our server, not inside monday.com’s automation engine. All actions in one automation count as one execution.

Can I see what happened after each action in the chain?

Yes. Execution logs show each action in sequence, with success/failure status and details (what changed, which columns were updated, email send status, etc.).

What’s the difference between sequential and parallel action execution?

Sequential (what BoardBridge does): Action 1 → Action 2 → Action 3. Slower, but actions can share data and depend on each other.

Parallel (what monday.com does): Action 1, 2, 3 happen at the same time. Faster for independent actions, but no data sharing between actions.

Final Thoughts

Action chaining turns complex multi-step workflows into one reliable automation. Instead of managing three separate automations that fire at unpredictable times and hope they coordinate correctly, you define one automation with a clear sequence of actions.

Each action completes, the next action sees the results, and if something fails, you know immediately instead of discovering hours later that a status was updated but an email never sent.

For teams coordinating multi-step processes, this is the difference between automation that feels fragile and automation that just works.

Book a consultation to see how action chaining works for your workflow: https://calendly.com/rp-spaceo/call-with-rakesh-est-timezone