I have noticed after the recent switch to automatic data refresh that AutoCat sometimes results in bad data. What seems to be happening is that new data are sometimes populating while AutoCat is running. This can result not only in rows being miscategorized entirely, but also in data seemingly shifting, such that the “Full Description” contents appear on an unrelated row.
I have observed this behavior several times, and so far I have been able to work around it by restoring to an earlier version and then allowing data to re-populate. However, I wonder if this has the potential for causing bigger issues, especially for users who may have AutoCat running automatically—possibly not noticing data issues until well after the fact.
Edit: Just for clarification, I am offering this as a constructive criticism pointing to a possible bug, in the interests of your doing further testing. I also believe it may be useful to allow us to downgrade back to the old manual refresh method while this gets worked out, because there is now no way to prevent filling while AutoCat is running; this has happened to me after I’ve clicked “Refresh Accounts” and waited for the refresh - some data still trickles in after the fact.
That’s really strange. I ping’d the team that deals with this so I know it’s on their radar, thanks for heads-up and the details.
@tom.kermode thank you!! This is definitely a bug, I’ll add it to the list for the team to investigate and hopefully address in our next dev cycle.
one thing you can do is just turn the Auto Run on Fill off for AutoCat for now, and don’t Run AutoCat manually just after using Refresh Accounts because it can take several minutes for all the accounts to refresh and data to fill.
Thanks. That workaround has been working well. I have also been making a copy of the Transactions sheet just prior to running AutoCat, in case I observe any incorrect data.
Thanks for investigating!
@tom.kermode we pushed a change today we hope will address this bug to prevent data corruption. Keep in mind it may mean that as you’re using Refresh Accounts and data is filling that would trigger AutoCat to run on fill any new data that gets pulled in while AutoCat is running won’t be filled until that process finishes and if you’re using AI Suggest that could be several minutes.
I did also notice some latency with the fill of data in this situation and that data for other accounts won’t fill right away if it gets skipped due to another process editing the sheet, which means it may not fill until a bit later.
Thanks, Heather! I will go back to my original workflow and advise if I see any issues.
