There is safe way to do this without generating Automation failures.
Make the creation of the parent a 2 step process.
Automation #1 called
Request Creation of Parent sets a date time field called perhaps [Date Time to Request Creation of Parent] to the value in the formula field [Current date/time] and it is triggered when a child is created and the the lookup of [Parent Exists?] is false.
Automation # 2 called
Actually Create Parent is triggered when [Date Time to Request Creation of Parent] changes and and the Parent does not exist. It will actually create the Parent.
What will happen is that if say 10 records are all imported at once and among them they need 5 parents created. Automation #1 will fire. But then all the requests to Automation #2 will nicely queue up
and be processed single file.What you will see will be that Automation #2 fires 1 time but if you drill down you will see that it has 5 actions - even though the Automation itself only has 1 Action.
You should experiment with an import or grid edit mass update or mass add records in grid edit to see how this works beautifully.
I have done this in situations where there are hundreds of Actions generated in one "run" even though the Automation might have just 1 or two action steps.
The whole trick is in the 2 step process.
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Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.commark.shnier@gmail.com
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