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Rule/Macro Actions Auto-Reorder After Saving, Breaking Action Dependencies

  • December 1, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 33 views
futureproof
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When saving rules or macros with multiple actions, the actions are automatically reordered to a fixed sequence rather than preserving the order I set. This breaks workflows where later actions depend on earlier ones.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Create a new rule with the following actions in this order:
    • Move to inbox "Support Requests"
    • Add tag "VIP Customer"
  2. Save the rule
  3. Reopen the rule to edit

Expected Behavior: Actions remain in the order I saved them.

Actual Behavior: Actions have been reordered to:

  • Add tag "VIP Customer"
  • Move to inbox "Support Requests"

Impact: This causes the rule to fail silently. In my example, the "VIP Customer" tag only exists in the "Support Requests" inbox. Because the tag action now runs before the move action, the tag isn't applied, the thread is moved but remains untagged.

Currently, my only workaround is to split dependent actions into separate rules, which adds complexity and maintenance overhead.

This appears to affect other action types as well, any workflow where action order matters is potentially impacted.

M

3 replies

cat_apac
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  • cat_apac
  • Fronteer
  • December 2, 2025

Hi there! Cat here from the Front support team 🌻

Yes this is expected! Front reorders actions to make sure move, delete conversation and move message to new conversation actions are last. I checked internally on this and it sounds like we do this to ensure that we can perform the rest of the actions before running the more impactful actions like moving/splitting/deleting.

Cheers,
Cat

futureproof
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  • futureproof
  • Author
  • Helper
  • December 2, 2025

Yes this is expected! Front reorders actions to make sure move, delete conversation and move message to new conversation actions are last. I checked internally on this and it sounds like we do this to ensure that we can perform the rest of the actions before running the more impactful actions like moving/splitting/deleting.

Thanks ​@cat_apac! Is is a recent change? I have not run into this issue in the past. While helpful at times, I’m sure, what about instances where actions are dependant on where the conversation is located?

As well as the tag example in my original post, which affects a large amount of my rules, I’m also having this issue with other rules that are dependant on moving or splitting conversations before running other actions.

The ability to set my own actions order is super important to the workflow. This change has broken multiple existing rules and macros.

cat_apac
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  • cat_apac
  • Fronteer
  • December 2, 2025

Hiya! No, this is not recent. Rules have always worked in this way and Macros were built originally using similar logic / processing to our rules engine.

For triggering additional context-relevant actions post-move, we’d recommend using two rules:

Rule one: triggers the relevant move

Rule two: WHEN Conversation is moved → THEN [inbox-relevant actions]

As long as Rule two is lower in the rule order, it can be triggered by the actions of Rule one!

Unfortunately split conversations will not trigger rules because we currently don’t support this rule action. Rules only apply the rule actions to the conversation on which the rule was triggered. You can add a comment and vote for this as a new feature in our Product Ideas Portal here: https://front.ideas.aha.io/ideas/PRD-I-2468

 

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