Formula Column Change Trigger: React When Any Calculated Value Updates

Formula columns in monday.com update automatically when their input data changes. A score recalculates, a total adjusts, a status derivation flips. The value changes — but monday.com has no native way to trigger an automation when it does.

Community Cookbook's Formula Column Change Trigger solves this.

The Problem

You've built a formula that calculates something important — a customer health score, a project risk rating, a derived priority level. The formula works perfectly. But you want to react when it changes, not just display the new value.

Native monday.com automations can watch status columns, date columns, number columns, and most other column types for changes. But formula columns are excluded. There's no "when formula column changes" trigger in the native automation builder.

The Solution: Formula Column Change Trigger

The recipe sentence:

"When a formula column's calculated value changes"

This trigger fires whenever the result of a formula column changes — regardless of what the new value is. It doesn't care about thresholds or specific values. Any change fires the trigger.

How to Use It

1. Install Community Cookbook from the monday.com marketplace
2. Create a new automation on your board
3. Select the Formula Column Change Trigger
4. Choose the formula column to watch
5. Add your actions

That's it. No thresholds to configure, no values to match. The trigger fires on any change.

When to Use This vs. the Threshold Trigger

Community Cookbook offers two formula triggers. Here's when to use each:

• Formula Change Trigger — when you care that the value changed at all, regardless of the new value. Good for audit trails, notifications, and syncing.
• Formula Threshold Trigger — when you only care about crossing a specific boundary. Good for alerts, escalations, and conditional workflows.

Real-World Use Cases

Audit Trail

Formula calculates a risk score from multiple factors. Whenever the score changes, log the change to a separate audit board — creating an automatic history of how risk evolved over time.

Real-Time Notifications

Formula derives a customer tier (Gold, Silver, Bronze) from spend data. When the tier changes, notify the account manager immediately so they can adjust their approach.

Dashboard Sync

Formula computes project status from subtasks. When the computed status changes, update a master dashboard board so leadership always sees current data.

Dependent Calculations

Formula A feeds into a decision that affects another board. When Formula A's result changes, trigger an update on the connected board to keep everything in sync.

Quality Scores

Formula tracks a rolling quality metric. Whenever it shifts — in either direction — flag the item for review.

Combining with Other Recipes

The Formula Column Change Trigger pairs well with other Community Cookbook recipes:

• Use it with Update Status in Connected Board to propagate formula-driven changes across boards
• Combine with Copy Mirror Column Value to keep derived data available in downstream boards
• Chain with the OR Status Trigger for complex conditional logic based on formula changes

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this trigger fire for every small recalculation?+

Can I use this with formula columns that return text?+

How does this interact with monday.com's automation limits?+