Every 15 minutes

Hear in Slack when a status changes

When the Status column changes on a row, the change is posted in Slack.

Runs: Every 15 minutes
Apps: Microsoft Excel
AI: Not needed
Access: Files.Read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 15 minutes, check my Projects table and tell #ops in Slack when any row's Status changes, with the old and new value.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

In a shared Excel tracker, the rows that matter most are the ones that change. A purchase order moves from Pending to Approved, a candidate's stage is updated to Offer, a project's due date slips by two weeks. The person who depends on that change is rarely the person who made it, and nobody sends a message, so the update sits in a cell until someone happens to scroll past it and notice, often days late.

Every 15 minutes, ClickRuntime reads the rows of your table, calculates a fingerprint of each row and compares it with the fingerprints saved at the last check. Rows whose content differs are reported to you by name, so you see exactly which entries changed since then.

It is a good fit for approval trackers, pipelines, and any workbook where several people edit and others need to react to what they did.

What you get out of it

The right person hears about a change quickly
When a status moves to Approved, the person waiting to place the order finds out within minutes. Work that depends on someone else's edit no longer stalls for days because nobody told anyone, and people stop sending reminder messages.
Unplanned edits are caught
A date or amount changed by mistake, or by someone who should not have touched it, is reported as a changed row. You can look at it the same day, while the person who made the edit still remembers why they did it.
Handovers need fewer meetings
If a colleague updates a tracker before leaving for the day, the next person is told what moved. That reduces status calls and the habit of asking in chat whether anything is new.
An informal audit trail builds up
Each report says which rows changed and when it was noticed. When someone later asks when a deal moved to Approved, you can check your emails instead of guessing from memory.
Any column can be the trigger
Because the whole row is compared, a change to a status, an owner or a deadline will all show up. You do not need to decide in advance which cell matters, and new columns are covered automatically.
No need to rebuild the workbook
Your team keeps editing the same Excel file in the same way. The monitoring sits alongside it, so nobody has to switch to another tool or learn a new process.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 15 minutes, ClickRuntime reads the Status column of your Excel table.
It compares each row with the status it saw last time.
For each row that changed, it posts a line to your #ops Slack channel, such as "Row 1042: Packed → Shipped".

Before it runs live

Connect Microsoft Excel

What you get

RunsEvery 15 minutes

Hear in Slack when a status changestoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #opsRow 1042: Packed → Shipped Row 1047: New → On hold

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Microsoft Excel steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

updated_row_alert.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

TABLE = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/drive/items/01ABCDEF.../workbook/tables/Orders"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('microsoft', 'work')}"}
    cols = [c["name"] for c in http.get(f"{TABLE}/columns", headers=h).json()["value"]]
    rows = [dict(zip(cols, r["values"][0])) for r in http.get(f"{TABLE}/rows", headers=h).json()["value"]]
    before = state.get("status") or {}
    now = {str(r["ID"]): r["Status"] for r in rows}
    changed = [(k, before[k], v) for k, v in now.items() if k in before and before[k] != v]
    report_fetched(len(changed))
    state.set("status", now)
    if not changed:
        return {"summary": "No changes"}
    notify.slack("\n".join(f"Row {k}: {old} → {new}" for k, old, new in changed), channel="#ops")
    return {"changed": len(changed)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it tell me what changed in the row or only that it changed?

It reports the rows whose content differs from the last check. The message can include the current values of the row, and if you want old and new values side by side, the previous values can be stored and shown as well.

Will adding a new row count as an update?

New rows have no earlier fingerprint, so you can choose to treat them as new entries or ignore them. Many people pair this with a separate new-row alert and leave this one for edits only.

Can I watch just one column, such as Status?

Yes. Instead of comparing the whole row, the check can look at a single column or a few. Then only a change to Status triggers a message, and edits to notes or other columns are ignored.

What permissions does it need?

Files.Read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

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