When an automation does not do what you expected, work down this list in order. The answer is nearly always in the first three.

1. Is it on?

The most common answer, and the most embarrassing. Automations can be switched off — including by whoever was testing it last.

2. Did the trigger actually happen?

Be precise about what you changed. An automation on Status becomes In review does not fire when you edit the description, and does not fire if the status was already In review.

3. Did the conditions pass?

Conditions are silent when they exclude something — nothing runs, nothing is reported. Re-read them against the record: was priority really High? Was the client field really filled in?

Remember date conditions evaluate in the workspace timezone, so "today" near midnight may not mean what you assume.

4. Read the run history

Open Executions, the history icon in the builder's toolbar. The run history is the ground truth: whether it fired, what it did, and what failed. Guessing without opening it wastes more time than reading it.

No run at all → the trigger never matched. Back to 2.
Ran, did nothing → a condition excluded it. Back to 3.
Ran and failed → the error usually names the action that broke.
Waiting → the run is paused until a Run workflow or Agent step gets its results back, and the step shows how many have arrived. It carries on by itself once they arrive. If an Agent step is waiting for approval, the run carries on only after the person the workflow runs as chooses Approve or Decline on it in Executions; if nobody decides within a day, the step fails.

A run started by another workflow says Started by and the name of that workflow at the top. In the parent run, the Run workflow step lists its Child runs, each with Open. When a parent fails on that step, open the child: the real error is there.

5. Check the connection

If the action posts to chat, sends mail through your own server, or writes to a calendar, an expired token stops it silently. Open your profile menu, choose Integrations, and look for Reconnect needed on the tool's card.

This is the classic "it worked for months and just stopped" cause.

6. Check permissions

An automation acting on a sheet needs access to it. If a record it should have created is missing, access is worth checking.

Testing well

Test with a real record in a real sheet, not a mental model.
Change one thing at a time, so you know which change fired it.
Test the case that should not fire too. An automation that runs when it should not is worse than one that never runs.

Test and debug an automation