Hm, if the information you want to scrape is on a publicly accessible page (no logins needed) you can try using Omni / a field agent to scrape the page for you and get the details. My experience for this has been pretty mixed, possibly because the pages I’m scraping are too complicated though
Are there any APIs available to check the status?
@Taha-Jiruwala The Api process to link to UPS, Fedex, is over our head
I wouldn’t recommend using web scraping to get the status, since it won’t be consistent. Instead, I suggest using their APIs.
You’ll need to create a developer account with FedEx and UPS to get API keys. Once you have those, you can use tools like Make, Zapier, or n8n to call the APIs and update the records in Airtable based on the response.
Also note that you’ll have to pay for the API services you use. Alternatively, you can explore multi-carrier tools like AfterShip or Shippo.
If you need help setting it up, you can reach out to me here.
Taha, Views And Bases
If it is just a matter of updating statuses in a timely way, I’m with Taha: you’ll want to hook into FedEx/UPS APIs. This is one of those investments that, as you scale, I’d be willing to bet it’ll be worth the investment.
If there are other ways things are breaking—are people not updating statuses in a timely way? Updating the wrong work orders? Not referencing the correct parts or vendor?—it might be an indicator you need to do some restructuring in your base or look into other features (e.g. extensions, templates, forms, interfaces) you may not be leveraging yet, which might streamline and/or structure workflows in a way that lead to fewer errors and mistakes.
I’m also curious about your base structure. Is your Parts Bible part of the base (e.g. a distinct table separate from order tracking) or does it exist as an external resource people reference while making updates? Or are the parts bible and order tracking mashed into the same table? This is where Airtable’s linked record functionality could really shine and help simplify some things—but only if the data is actually set up that way.
Basically, my thinking is if you can’t hook into the FedEx or UPS APIs for whatever reason (technical details, costs), I’d start asking “where can we simplify and reduce pain points so updating this one thing manually isn’t as much of an ask for my team members?”
If you receive email notifications from the carriers, you could potentially have those automatically forward to an Airtable automation that creates new records for each email update. From there, you would need Agent fields that parse the email body for the tracking number and update information. You’d have to do some experimentation with the prompting, but you can probably get it to log fairly consistent results. Once the data is in the agent fields, you’d need a second automation that searches the main table where you have the shipment’s tracking numbers stored and updates their status.
The APIs, as suggested, would be far more accurate, but if you’re looking for a quick and dirty fix without any dev time and ongoing costs (besides tokens), that’s probably the best bet. Again, if this is mission critical data, you are better off using the APIs.