Automations

This new automation feature is amazing! Finally we can automate our task workflow as projects move through different phases. This is a real time saver. Just wondering if there is a way to set a due date on a task for the day after the automation runs. Anyone have any ideas?

Hi there, I have a communications calendar that I’m trying to have automate some email sends through the Gmail automation. I have my emails on that table as a lookup field, but the automation isn’t recognizing it as an email address so it’s failing the test. Is there a formula that will basically copy what’s being looked up and just format properly so that it’s an email address? Thank you for your help! Amy

Hello everyone! I am trying to build an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) using AirTable. I basically have a Candidates table, a Companies table and a Candidate_Company table that links a candidate to a company including other infos such as the recruitment step of the candidate in the company. Whenever a new candidate is created, I’d like to automatically add rows in the Candidate_Company with the newly created candidate id and the id of all the companies. Same when I add a new company so it automatically add rows in the Candidate_Company with the newly created company id and the id of all the candidates. From what I’ve understand so far, Automations alone won’t be able to do that, it looks like I’ll have to combine Automations and Scripts, am I right? Do you have any article or tutorial that could give me some hints on how to proceed? Thank you! :slightly_smiling_face:

Hello! My setup is : two tables fisrt is made with my participants second is made of my categories (event A, event B,…) I am looking for updating the number of participants recorded in my first table in each event that are in my second table. So far, I could compute the total number of participant by event in table 2, but I cannot find out how to update this calculation while a new record is occuring. Because automation Update record replace the value : it seems impossible to append a record, nor to use a variable like “ALL RECORDS” (for example). How can I manage this issue ? Thank you !

I think there’s a glitch in the Google Sheets automation. I set up this automation and the data is showing up in completely random columns on my Google Sheet. I’ve double checked and I mapped the columns correctly. Anyone else dealt with this?

This is driving me slightyl potty. I have a table which records staff absence meeting outcomes. It links to the individuals main staff record though a link to another record column. The staff absence records have a check box - which when ticked should trigger an email automaiton. I’ve set the ‘when a record is updtaed’ trigger no issues. I’ve linked gmail account. Settign the email to send though is causing me pain. The ‘To’ feild - blue ‘+’ click on ‘record form step 1’ - continue. All the record fields appear (is field the correct word - the columns in the table I mean) so when I then click on the linked record I expect a black feild values arrow to appear so I can selct the feild that contains the email address in the linked record. But what actually appears is another continue whcih leads to a drop down with ‘list of properites <>length’ and make a new list of <>ID <>Name. Tried using an extra lookup field in the staff absecne table - automations wont play with it

hello, i want to copy my first field to second field using automation as shown in image below. any help please? my automation’s trigger is “when a record is created” and action is “Update record” i want to update my second field with my first field’s value

Hello humans who I hope can help! I successfully set up a Slack message automation on to one view/action, but as I try to replicate that automation, I’m getting an error in testing. The trigger is working fine, but if I add any Record lookup into the message, I get a testing error that reads: “Message” refers to a trigger or action that does not exist. Here’s what it looks like: And I have no clue what could be wrong. Help?

Hi! I am trying to set up an automation so that when we update the record, an email is sent out to a client with the updated notes. However, when I use the date link in the Automation, the email test comes back with “2020-10-30T18:04:00.000Z” as opposed to the US format (10/30/2020 at 6 pm). Am I missing something that is causing this to come out this way?

Hi, I’m trying to create automations - that an email is sent when a record has a certain status. What I’d like to do is include certain fields in the email, so that the email includes, for example, a records name. Ideas?

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 automation. This actually DOES work, but

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 fields to be notified a

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?