Database automations

In this Article

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Database automations are sequences of actions that happen any time a specific change to a database occurs. Automations consist of both triggers (the events that initiate the automation) and actions (the effect of the automation). Database automations are meant to help save you time and simplify your work, and can be very basic or more complex depending on your needs.

Database automations can be used for many things, including:

Assigning a task to a specific person when its status changes.
Sending a Slack notification to a channel when a page is added to a database.

Note:

Database automations are available on paid plans on all platforms. Free plan users can create Slack notification automations and use, but not edit, existing automations in templates.
Database automations can be created, edited, or deleted by anyone with full access to the database. Slack automations are the only exception. These can only be edited by the automation creator.
Automations won’t take action on any pages whose access is restricted. You can check and change page access in the share menu.
Database automations can't be triggered by other automations. Button actions, however, can trigger database automations. For example:
- A recurring template automation will not trigger a database automation.
- A database automation creating a page in another database will not trigger a database automation.
- A user clicking a button that creates a page will trigger a database automation.

Create a database automation

To create a database automation:

Click ⚡ at the top of a database → New automation.
Give your database automation a name if you’d like.
Add triggers. Learn more about the types of triggers below →
Add actions. Learn more about the types of actions below →
Select Save.

Did you know you can also add a button property to your database? With the click of a button, actions can be taken on your database on your behalf. Learn more here →

Database automation triggers

Automations can have one trigger or multiple triggers. When you set up an automation, you can decide whether the automation will take place When any of these occur or When all of these occur.

Note: If you have multiple is edited triggers that must all occur for your automation to take place, those triggers need to happen within a small window of about three seconds. If they don’t, your automation may not be triggered properly. To avoid this, you can:

Create separate automations for each trigger.
Use a more specific trigger than is edited, like is set to or contains.

You can choose from two types of triggers: Page added or Property edited.

If you choose a Property edited trigger, you can indicate which properties from your database will trigger the automation.

For name, person, number, text, select, and relation properties, you can choose what kinds of edits made to that property will trigger an automation. For example, you might have a list of contacts in a Notion database and set up an automation where the trigger is a phone number starting with the numbers 732, and the action is that person’s state being set to New Jersey.

You can also have more than one condition for your trigger so that two or more things must be true for the automation to occur.

Database automation actions

Automations can take one action or multiple actions. You can choose from a variety of actions:

Edit property will edit the properties of pages in the database you are currently in.
Add page to will add a page to a database of your choosing, and edit the properties of that page.
Edit pages in will edit pages and properties in a database of your choosing.
Send notification to will send a notification to specific people in your Notion workspace. Your recipient can be up to 20 people in your workspace, or people who are associated with a certain People property in your database. Add a message that you want to go along with the notification.
Send Slack notification to… will send a notification to the Slack channel you want.

If you choose an Edit property trigger, you can indicate how you want those properties to be updated.

For multi-select, people, and relation properties, you can add or remove individual values instead of adding or removing all values at once. For example, you might have a task database where if the task name contains the word “blog”, your name is added to the people property, even if there are other people already assigned to that task.

Get more inspiration for using database workflows in this guide →

Edit, pause, or delete database automations

To see and manage all of the automations for a database:

Click ⚡ at the top of a database.
- This ⚡ will only appear if you have active automations.
Hover over the automation and click •••.
Select Edit, Pause, or Delete.

FAQs

How frequently is the database scanned for “changes” in properties?

Database automations work over a three second window. For example, within this three second window, a user can remove a trigger and delete any changes, resulting in no property change to the automation.

Do automations work on pages in the entire database, or pages in a single database view?

Either one. During the creation process, you can specify if the automation should run on pages in the entire database, or in a specific view. If any filters in that view change, the automation will then apply to the adjusted list of pages.

Can guests with full access to a database create automations?

Unfortunately, guests can't create database automations.