Hello Everyone,

I am working on a parent–child scoring system in Zoho Creator and facing an issue with recursive workflows.

I have a Project (parent form) and a Tasks (child form) linked using a lookup field. Each Task contains a Score field, and the Project stores a Total_Score.

The current logic is as follows:

When a Task is created or updated, it recalculates and updates the Project’s Total_Score.

After updating the Project, I need to distribute or normalize values back to all related Tasks (for example, calculating a Normalized_Score).

This creates a bidirectional dependency:

Task update triggers Project update

Project update triggers Task updates

Task updates again trigger its workflow

This results in a recursive loop and eventually hits the workflow execution limit.

I have considered using a hidden toggle field to control execution and also Scheduled (V3) functions, but these approaches are either not clean or not suitable for near real-time updates.

I would like to know:

Is there a way to perform an update without triggering workflows (a “silent update”) in Zoho Creator?

Are there any recommended design patterns to handle this type of parent–child bidirectional logic without hitting recursion limits?

The goal is to maintain real-time aggregation from child to parent and controlled redistribution from parent to child without causing recursive workflow failures.

Any suggestions or best practices would be helpful.

Thank you.