monday.com Cross-Board Automation Limitations

You need one automation: When a vendor confirms on the Vendor Confirmations board, create a travel item on the Travel board — but only for outbound travel, only for confirmed vendors, and only if the event date is more than 30 days away.

With classic monday.com automations, teams typically build:

1. One automation to create the travel item (but it fires for ALL confirmations, not just outbound)
2. A second automation to delete the item if it’s not outbound (workaround)
3. Manual filtering for the 30-day date rule
4. Separate automations for different scenarios

Several automations to handle one logical workflow — where one workflow with If/Else and a Smart condition for the date could do it, from the Standard plan.

Cross-Board Automations Have Restrictions

Here’s what teams need:

One trigger → Actions across multiple boards:

• Vendor confirms → create item on Travel board AND Production board
• Status changes on Board A → update status on Board B AND send email
• Item created → copy to Board B with conditions (only if Type = “VIP”)

With compound conditions:

• Status = “Confirmed” AND Type = “Outbound” → create travel item
• Status = “Approved” AND Priority = “High” AND Budget > $10,000 → escalate

What monday.com offers:

Cross-board “create item” automation with these limitations:

1. AND-only conditions — you can add several conditions, but there’s no else branch outside the workflow builder
2. Dropdown not supported in match automations — you can’t use dropdown changes as the match trigger
3. Limited column types transfer — Dependency, Link to Item and Time Tracking columns can’t be mapped (users also report Location)
4. No documented group choice — community answers say created items land in the top group, so routing by condition needs move automations or workflow branches

The result: Teams on classic recipes often build many separate automations for scenarios that one workflow with branches could handle.

What monday.com Users Are Saying

Thread: Match automations need dropdown menus as column change trigger

monday.com’s “match” automations only support specific column types as triggers. Dropdown columns are excluded from the column change trigger selector.

Thread: Create item in another board — location column not copying — April 2025

“When I try to create an item via automation from 1 board to a second board, location columns on the source board don’t appear to be supported to copy to the second board.” — julDH14 (Julie H), April 1, 2025

No monday.com staff response.

Thread: Automation by column change does not work if the change was by automation — October 2023

“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

An implementation consultant replied that Board B’s automations triggered by that column change don’t fire when another automation made the change. monday.com’s docs don’t state this as a rule, so test chained automations before relying on them.

Thread: Moving items with subitems to another board via automation doesn’t carry subitems columns

The thread reported subitem columns arriving empty. monday.com’s documentation says subitems move with the item, and subitem values carry over when the column type and title match on both boards (monday.com Help Center).

Thread: Create an automation to create multiple items based on column — March – November 2023

“when status changes to done. It should duplicate this item but it duplicate it multiple times according to the number in another column” — Eystar, March 1, 2023

“items get continually created until I go in and turn off the automation” — kdawkins, November 8, 2023

monday.com staff (BiancaT) suggested creating separate automations for each numerical value — “a bit tedious to set up.”

Official monday.com documentation confirms (Cross-board automations – monday.com Support):

Dropdown is unsupported only in match automations. Community users also report Location columns not copying (monday.com Community) and unreliable dropdown triggers (monday.com Community).

How to Work Around These Limits in monday.com

1. Conditions: AND in Recipes, OR and Dates in Workflows

Scenario: Vendor confirms → create travel item, but only for outbound travel and only if the event is more than 30 days away.

All conditions must be true for the action to fire. Learn more about monday.com compound conditions with status and dropdown. A worked example is in our guide to auto-creating items on another board when a status is confirmed.

Native monday.com: Classic recipes need a separate automation per Type value; a workflow can do it with If/Else and a Smart condition for the date rule.

2. One Trigger → Multiple Board Actions

Scenario: Vendor confirms → create travel item AND production item AND notify the logistics team.

Native monday.com: One custom automation can include several actions across boards, or you can chain them in a workflow. See one trigger, multiple actions for how the actions run. To start the change from a button instead, see updating a status on another board with a button click.

3. Conditional Group Routing

Scenario: Create travel items in different groups based on type.

Native monday.com: monday.com doesn’t document choosing a group when a recipe creates an item. Add a “move item to group” automation on the target board for each group, or route in a workflow with multi-branch conditions. See targeting a specific group.

4. Column Types That Don’t Transfer

Dependency, Link to Item and Time Tracking columns can’t be mapped, and users report Location columns not copying. Add the column to both boards before mapping, and test values after the first run. Learn more about monday.com data transfer between boards with proper column formatting. For which column values copy and which don’t, see column copying between boards.

Wondering whether BoardBridge fits a workflow like this? Ask us.

Real-World Example: Vendor Confirmation Workflow

Vendor Confirmations Board:

• Vendor: “Alex Johnson”
• Status: “Confirmed”
• Type: “Outbound” (Dropdown)
• Date: March 15, 2027
• Destination: “Chicago”

When status changes to “Confirmed”:

In one workflow:

1. Is Type = “Outbound”? → Yes
2. Is Date more than 30 days away (Smart condition)? → Yes (assuming today is before Feb 13, 2027)
3. → Create item on Travel board
4. → Create item on Production board
5. → Notify the logistics team

Classic monday.com recipes: You’d build:

• Automation 1: Status “Confirmed” → create item on Travel (fires for ALL confirmations unless you add an “only if” condition on Type)
• Automation 2: Status “Confirmed” → create item on Production
• Automation 3: Status “Confirmed” → notify the logistics team
• Manual filtering or workarounds to handle the Date rule

Cross-Board Trigger Chaining

Scenario: Item created on Board A → updates Board B → triggers action on Board C.

Native monday.com: Community reports say a change made by one automation doesn’t fire another board’s automations; monday.com doesn’t document this either way. Workflows sidestep it by chaining the steps in one run.

See the monday.com status change cross-board trigger guide for more details.

Example flow:

1. Vendor confirms on Confirmations board
2. → The workflow creates an item on the Travel board
3. → The same workflow creates the Production board item
4. → It notifies the team

All in one workflow run, so nothing depends on one automation triggering another.

Limitations You Should Know

OR logic and date rules need a workflow. Classic recipes AND their conditions; If/Else and Smart conditions live in the workflow builder.

Subitem values need matching columns. monday.com says subitems move with the item, and subitem values carry over when the column type and title match on both boards.

Connect Boards has plan limits. A board connects to 1, 5, 20 or 200 other boards (Basic, Standard, Pro, Enterprise) and holds 10,000 linked items (100,000 on Enterprise).

Need these workarounds built? We set them up as part of our monday.com customization services.

Frequently Asked Questions