Hello,
I have resolved most of the issues (some quite basic) in my original post using trial and error but have lingering questions.

1. When I trigger the User External trigger, and append "&user=70" to the long URL, I thought it would just run the action on user 70, but it seems to run on all of my users anyway. The only way I have found to actually limit it to take Action on user 70 is to set the condition as: [user_id] equals [get_users]. It seems to work, and the action successfully appends the user id of #me (the viewer) into a field in user 70 (so I can then see a list that filters using that - the whole goal here)

Is there a better way to do this? My action is
Trigger: Users
Type: Field
User: Automatic
Access: Everybody

The condition is: [user_id] equal to [get_users] <-- this is the part I thought it automatically did, when you pass &users=X through the URL


2. The thing works if I am logged in as a super administrator. I get access issues when I am someone else. I've tried to set access to 1) Everyone 2) the target user's one, 3) the viewers one 5) both, but nothing works. Could this be something to do with permissions? I have some new user groups set up after I installed CB. Any guidance would be very welcome.

3. Lastly, after the hyperlink containing the cbautoaction link has been clicked, is there a way to redirect the user back to another page. I am left on a blank page.

Thanks very much in advance

Thank you very much Kyle. That illuminates a lot - I had mistakenly though that the link without the trigger was for testing purposes only. I'll try your suggestions and hopefully resolve the access issues at the same time.
Much appreciated,
Remy.

Hi Kyle,
Could I ask for some additional guidance? I have two auto action needs:
1. insert the active user ID into a field on the user I am viewing. I'm using auto action FIELD and its working

2. Remove the active ID from that same field of the multiple CSV IDs. (They start with a comma: ",52,43,58,120,...)

Reading your forum responses, I think I learned that I cannot do that with a field action, but should instead do it with a QUERY action.

To test it, I have successfully gotten the field to just increase by 1 (with URL manual trigger for the target users)
UPDATE `#__comprofiler` SET `cb_requested_by_currently` = (cb_requested_by_currently +1)

But I can't get the replacement thing to work. To be clear, if I am logged in as user 43, I'd like to remove a ",43," (ID with commas on each side) from the field in the target user (passed through the URL with &users)

Here is what I have come up with, but not knowing SQL or if its OK to mix substitutions in it, am struggling to know where the problem(s) are.

UPDATE `#__comprofiler` SET `cb_requested_by_currently` = (SELECT REPLACE(cb_requested_by_currently, `,[cb:userdata field="Id" user="#me" /],` , `,` ));

By the way, even when I replace the `,[cb:userdata field="Id" user="#me" /],` with a simple `,43,` it doesnt work.

Thanks for any guidance,
Remy.

Hi Kyle,
I'm still having permission issues and narrowed it down to having to set the user as "Manager" as well as the access level that I have from my CB subs plan.

ie the auto action fails unless the person has Manager permission, even though all the settings you mentioned in the plugin are open, and the action is set to Everyone? Do you know what might be specific about Manager (I never use it)?

Also, an update on the query, for anyone else trying to do a similar thing.

The solution seems to be that you need to use double quotes inside the replace function (as well as not use SELECT in addition to UPDATE):
This now works for me, when called using the URL with the &users=XX from the website (a field with the fullURL+ &users=[userID] appended.
Field with a button that has a No trigger Action URL + &users=[userID] appended

Action of type Query, with no conditions:
UPDATE `#__comprofiler` SET `thefieldtoupdate` = REPLACE(thefieldtoupdate, ",[cb:userdata field="Id" user="#me" /],", ",") WHERE `id` = [user_id];