Im not sure if this is a glitch or bug long-running since the Automation was firstly introduced to us, but this makes Automation less capable to deal with data change action involving [_thisrow_before] values.
[_thisrow_before] syntax is used quite commonly inside the Automation, such as setting up conditional event trigger and/or branch condition etc. This made us believe in that the same syntax could be used inside data change action (not shared one) to pass the before value.
As we can see the above image, the same syntax is "accepted" by AppSheet editor. But once the automation is run, the value passed to the column with Before syntax is actually, "After" value for change. This causes another confusion to us.
It is making sense the [_thisrow_before] is not accepted for pure data action (only used in Client side). But the actions invoked only from Automation, it make us easy and widen the usage of Automation if the [_thisrow_before] returns correct value (before value) as it should be originally designed.
For the moment, we need to physically save the [_thisrow_before] value for certain column and pass that value to the automation, which is actually tedious.
Currently, the data action with [_thisrow_before] syntax is returning the present value. For this point, I would say this is a bug. If the action inside Automation can not deal with this syntax, then AppSheet Editor should return the error once the app creator pass the same syntax inside the data change action.
Thank you.
@lizlynch
@takuya_miyai
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