Automations

I am trying to set up a project management portal. I have two tables, projects and tasks. When I update the status of a project, I want to create a task in the tasks table, and set the due date of the task ahead one week from today. All is well until I get to entering the value for the due date field. I can’t seem to get it to resolve functions. As a test, tried to use TODAY() in the textbox of my field in the automation, but when I trigger it, the “runs” section claims it errors out with: Field “Due” cannot accept the provided value: Could not convert string to date. So it is trying to convert the string “TODAY()” to a date. I’ve tried {TODAY()} and =TODAY() with no success. Am I missing something or is this impossible? The only thing I can think of as a dirty workaround is to create a new formula field in the projects table that does something like DATEADD(TODAY(), 7, “days”), then reference this field when setting the value of “due” in my automatio

Hi, I’m trying to create an automation that will 1) create a new record in table A when a record is created in table B, and 2) add table B’s primary field as a linked field in table A. I added the linked field in step 2 using the blue +, starting with the action in step 1 and choosing a property in table B. But I only get as far as a new record in A- the linked field is empty.

Will I have any issues if I create an automation that runs a script when a record is updated and I update say 5,000 records at once via pasting updated information in a field?

Hi all – I’m in the process of creating an automation, and realized I needed to add some additional columns to the original airtable view to work the way I wanted. It doesn’t seem like there is a way to “refresh” the table view to pull in new columns. Is this true or am I just missing it? Otherwise, I’ll have to delete my automation in progress and start over, I’m guessing. TIA for any input! :slightly_smiling_face:

Hi - I set up an automation to trigger off when a new row is created in Google Sheets. I tried a test with a new row inserted into the middle of the existing data – and it seems that the automation isn’t picking that up. Is this an error I can fix or just by design? If it’s only going to pull the last row added, that won’t work for a number of my use cases for this particular automation. Thanks in advance for your help.

once an Action is selected, it can’t be deleted. The only way to fix it is to delete everything and start over (keeping the Trigger alone is not much use). Hoping this is on the roadmap for urgently needed fixes.

I’m running into an issue in automations in multiple ways. Ultimately I’m trying to have an email sent to a list of collaborators that are listed in various collaborator fields when a certain condition is met. One of those fields will always be filled but not all of them. When all three are filled, I don’t have any issues but when just one is empty, the automation fails to construct that element. I tried creating an automation that would essentially copy any collaborators from the other two fields into the third but that also has issues when any one of them are blank. The idea is a student behavioral tracker. One staff submits the issue (the “Submitter” collaborator field always filled with one staff member), other staff members may be “involved” (the “Additional Staff Involved” collaborator field which could be empty), and still others could be notified but are not involved (the “Staff to notify” collaborator field). I’d like all collaborators in any one of the

I created an automation script and it always works… but sometimes without any reason it throw a non helpful error that I can’t track. “Run a script” shows “Step failed.” and execution log shows: “There was an unexpected error while executing your script.” Is there anyway to track this error?

Is there a way to add cells from an airtable to a message sent via automation? So if the conditions for the automation trigger are met could the message include information from variables/columns for the row triggering the automation?

I can create a date automation using “exact date” or one of the other specific choices I’m given, but I would like to have an automation (email sent) run every Monday (or whatever day of the week I want) but I don’t see that as an option. Surely this must be possible. Can someone tell me how? Thanks

For example, I have a table with columns. I need to automate the filling of the “URL” and “photo” columns. The “URL” will be the same for all columns, so I need it to be automatically duplicated when filling the “name” column. How can I do it? Next question: How to bind the column name “name” to a specific attachment “photo”? For example, so that when the name “rat”, is added, the already added photo, which is in this table, appears in the “attachments” column automatically? Thanks!

Here is another cool option for automation - alternative to Zapier and Integromate. This is self-hosted and free (fair-use license) https://n8n.io/integrations

Hi there, Still a little new to this. I want to create a timestamp date for when something moves to a certain stage (in our case from In Progress to Published). I’ve seen that there are some automation with “Last Modified By”, but I am nervous, that if someone goes in afterwards to update the entry, then it will distort the results. Is there a way to simply update a field with Date entered stage? Thanks Ilan

The Send Tweet automation worked well, but I am now getting an error : Twitter API error: Application cannot perform write actions. Contact Twitter Platform Operations through https://help.twitter.com/forms/platform. How can one get a resolution ?

Hey all, Super excited that the email automation now supports document attachments! I’m working on a set-up for a client, and it would be really helpful if I could attach a few of the documents in the record when they get their ‘new record’ notification. Problem is, I’ve got three document fields I’d like to include, any of which may or may not have documents, and the attachment automation only runs if it finds a value for all of the fields I’m trying to attach. Before I go all in on setting up views for every possible combination of documents existing, is there a workaround for this that I’m not thinking of?

Hi everyone! What I want is for several Airtable basis to ‘sync’ with specific worksheets in a single Google Sheet. I have been testing “When a record matches conditions”, “Append a new row to a spreadsheet” which theoretically should work. But I also need the record to get updated in real time in the Google Sheet, and be removed from there if it’s removed from Airtable. Or, if a column in the record is updated, I would like the Google Sheet to reflect that. That does not seem to be happening. Does anyone have any ideas of what I’m doing wrong?

There is forum category for Apps, Formulas etc… but Automations should have its own category.

Hello, when I create an automation to publish to twitter events with a specific date. This field appears like this on the tweet: 2020-09-30T15:45:00.000Z Instead of a more human-readable format. I want to get something like this: 30/09/2020 15:45? Thanks,

I have no idea where to start on a formula for this. :stuck_out_tongue: What I would like to accomplish is for Airtable to compare two start times and two end times and tell me which of them matches up. One start/end time would be for an event or concert, and the second would be for employee availability. I want to know if an employee has a start/end time that overlaps an events start/end time. If the two times match I would like Airtable to tell me which employees are available during that event or concert. I have two tables, one table is for the event and its information then other table is for keeping track of employees available time. Table 1: is for events and projects. It has a column that has a start time and end time. Table 2: is for employee availability. It also has a column for start time and end time as well. What formula should I start building out. Should I combine the tables together to make it easier? Any suggestions

Hey, I’m trying to add an attachment to my action email in response to a trigger. The attachment is PDF or PNG and is in an Attachment field. But every time I run a test, it gives me test error: Step failed. Failed to construct the value for “Attachments”. How do I get it to read the value? Your help is appreciated.

I’m surprised this isn’t an option. Is it for fool-proof reasons?

Hi, With the addition of automations in Airtable, I was wondering if it was possible to automatically click on a button each 1st of the month? I’ve seen the triggers “new record in view”, but not scheduled ones (for example: every day, every month, 1st day of the month, etc.) Do you know if that is possible? Thank you

Hi all, I’m loving the new Automations in Airtable, but getting stuck on what I think should be a pretty simple thing… I have a table that functions as an inbox for messages and attachments coming in via a Zapier integration from an email inbox. And I want to then use Automations to copy these incoming records to various tables where they’ll be processed - I have a growing variety of incoming message types so want to split out the handling of each type to a dedicated table. I can easily create new records and populate with much of the relevant data, but I cannot move an attachment(s) across to the new record in the second table. What’s the easiest way to achieve that? Thanks!

Not sure how to report a bug, however regardless of platform, when I go to click on an Automation flow I’ve built previously, the automation blinks and then its just a big blue box and I can’t see the edit screen for the flow. Ive experienced this 3 times now and it makes airtables unusable as this bug breaks standard functionality. Who do we need to ping and how can we get eyes on this by the developers? Please and thank you in advance

Hi, So I set up an automation and am receiving an error message that I can’t quite work out. The automation is “Create a record” and I am updating about 40 fields. The automation has run successfully many times. The ones that didn’t run were missing some fields, but so were automations that processed successfully. Anyone know how I can get more clarity on what specifically is happening?