In our github actions workflow we want to rerun tests if the previous tests failed:
We made:

some-smoke-test-result:    
    name: Parse and analyze test results smoke test
    needs: [some-smoke-test]
    if: needs.some-smoke-test.outputs.some-id != ''
    runs-on: ${{inputs.runner-tag}}
    steps:
      - name: parse-test-result
        id: parse-test-result
        uses: some/some-actions/[email protected]
        with:
          testarena-id: ${{ needs.some-smoke-test.outputs.some-id }}
  
some-smoke-test-rerun:
    name: Rerun some smoke test
    needs: [some-smoke-test, some-smoke-test-result]
    if: always() && needs.steps.some-smoke-test-result.outcome == 'failure' 

However the if statement at the step test-result-smoke-test is not working as expected, when I only have the always() statement it is triggered as expected, but I only want to run it when the previous stage fails. For that reason I added && needs.steps.some-smoke-test-result.outcome == 'failure' However it is not triggering while the previous stage fails.

How should I trigger a stage ONLY if the previous stage failed

note i removed the earlier stages as everything else is working as expected.