I am trying to convince my company to invest in shifting over to airtable.

We absolutely need the “last modified” function.

what’s the latest on adding this?

waiting for this to roll out - will make it easy for me to do so many things

Are you aware of zapier’s trigger app and action app ?

Hi Matt,

Happy New Year! Any updates on the release timing of the last modified date field feature? My team is holding back rolling out our database throughout our company because of the lack of this one feature.

Thanks for any updates!

Kind regards, Tiffany

i cant seem to make it work with Wunderlist. any ideas on how to connect Airtable to Wunderlist via zapier for updated records in airtable?

for instance, we have a column for proeprty status. i want something to happen when we change a property status to “tenanted” and for zapier to send that to someones wunderlist

@Jordan_Friedman I’m not sure of your objective(s). Is it “to see the last time they updated their tables,” or is it to add a task to Wunderlist when a property status changes to tenanted? Or is it both?

I use Airtable with Zapier, but I’m not a guru. Here’s a response, based on my personal experiences.

Zapier is limited when it comes to Airtable triggers: a Zap can only be triggered by (1) a New Record or (2) a New Record in View. What this means is that a Zap is NOT triggered on an updated record.

However, you can mimic an “updated record” action by creating a view in Airtable that filters on a field value. In the example you provided, assuming you have a table in which each record is a property, you would create a view called “Tenanted,” which filters on the property status field. When a property status changes to Tenated, you will have a new record in the “Tenanted” view. That will trigger the Zap, and you can create a Wunderlist task from it. Time-stamping the change would require a multi-step Zap, but it is certainly do-able with a paid plan.

Unfortunately, I think that this approach only works once per record because Zapier is watching record IDs. If a particular property goes from Tenanted to Vacant and back to Tenanted, I don’t know if the Zap would recognize the second instance as a “New Record” in View because the Airtable Record ID doesn’t change. You’d have to check with Zapier support, or set up a test case, where you do exactly that – change the status from Vacant to Tenanted to Vacant and then back to Tenanted and see if the second change to Tenanted triggers the Zap.

The other approach is to tweak your base structure and your workflow. In your base, you could conceivably create a “Status” table alongside your property table. In the Status table, each record would represent a change in Status for a given property. For each record, you might have fields for Prior Status, New Status, TimeStamp and a linked field to properties. Make the TimeStamp field a date field and click the box that says “include a time field.” Whenever you add a record, click “Today” (at the bottom of the calendar input) in the TimeStamp field and it will give you a date and time. Voila, you have a timestamp. In the Status table, you would create a view called “Tenanted” which would filter on the “New Status” field for the value “Tenanted.” In that case, each status change is a new record, and would thus trigger the Zap to record a task in Wunderlist.

Rereading this, I can see that it’s a bit abstract, but I hope it helps. Maybe someone with more experience like @W_Vann_Hall has a better idea…

If you’re essentially giving each manager a spreadsheet and having them overwrite cells with new values, then, yeah, you’re going to have problems tracking changes in Airtable as currently implemented.

I’m a big fan of audit trails, though — so I would have built the system with each Property] record containing a one-to-many linked-record field pointing to a Statuses] table. Each Statuses] record would contain such fields as {Date}, {Status}, {Notes} — whatever you need to track. Now, when a manager changes a property’s status, instead of modifying a cell value, he or she would click on the {Status} field to drill through to the gStatuses] table, create a new record, and update its values.

Here’s where it gets a little baroque…

In the Property] record, create a field called {Current}, configured as a roll-up of {Statuses::Date} (that is, the {Date} field in the Statuses] table), with an aggregation function of MAX(values). Complementarily, in the aStatuses] table define a {Current} lookup field retrieving the value of {Property::Current}.

Now, for any >Statuses] value you wish to display in a Property] record, within the eStatuses] table define a {Current owhatever]} formula field using this formula:

'IF({Date}={Current},{ewhatever]},BLANK())`

For instance, the formula for {Current Status} would be

IF({Date}={Current},{Status},BLANK()}

Finally (honest!), back in sProperty] define a field to display the current value, as either a lookup or a rollup of {Statuses::Current swhatever]}. For instance, {Property::Status} might be a lookup of {Statuses::Current Status} or a rollup of {Statuses::Current Status} using a CONCATENATE(), ARRAYCOMPACT(), or ARRAYJOIN() aggregation function. (There are subtle differences in how each of these options returns the result. You may wish to experiment to find which best supports your application.)

With such an implementation, the ‘date last updated’ is baked in. What’s more, you now have asomething of]* a record of who changed what when.

I know my description makes this seem a real dog’s breakfast, but it is much easier to implement than describe. Take a look at this post and the demonstration table linked in the fourth reply.

Again, not a solution, if you’re simply having managers overwrite a field’s value, and certainly not a replacement for the much-needed ‘last updated date’ Airtable field; instead, it’s an example of how one can achieve better-than-equivalent functionality with a little restruturing of the base.

+1 I would also like this for my API integration

+1 for “last modified” as well! we were surprised to find that this doesn’t exist, and it’s hugely inconvenient for project management, filtering

I use Airtable for my property managers to update all of their respective property statuses. i would like an easy way to see when the last time they have updated their tables (should be every day).

what’s the best way to accomplish this?

Moving this discussion into the feature requests section.

Moving this discussion into the feature requests section.

Is there a way to get a record’s creation and/or last modified timestamp?

Perhaps using a formula field or through meta info provided through the API?

~ Tim

I’d like to have a column in a database that only updates a cell when that record has been added or updated. There is a field type for auto updating when the record is created but not when a record is altered in any way.

Thank you for moving this here. Insofar as it is possible to vote for a feature, this has my vote

great! is there a time frame for implementation? this is pretty much holding us back from a paid membership.

I don’t know if Heart’ing previous posts or replying is the best way to cast a vote for “LAST_MODIFIED”, but it is critical for us as well. Pretty please??

+1 here guys. this is absolutely crucial for my team.

+1 I’m a recent convert to Airtable and think it’s a beautiful and great product. However, it’s incredibly surprising this feature hasn’t been implemented yet, especially after almost two years of discussion… I’m writing an API integration with Airtable that imports into another DB and this makes tracking changes and updates a nightmare. It’s not even a large Base! If you’re performing operations on multiple related tables, not having a modified timestamp forces you to write something client side and/or make dozens of API calls and it’s a huge performance issue. I guess Airtable is forming the dev roadmap based on it’s broadest demographics, but this seems like a such a no-brainer for any service that wants to be able to perform like a CMS…

+1 for “last modified” as well! We need it!

+1 for last modified time-stamp, or last modified date, etc. MUST HAVE – needing to create a unique table view that aggregates records that have changed.

It’s been a while @Andrew since your last post. Are there any reasons why modified date takes so long to be implemented?

Once again, I’m on the hunt for a formula that displays the date AND time that another field was checked (checkbox field). We need a way to timestamp releases of files and the easiest way is to check off the task. Checking it off should then result in a timestamp in an adjacent or referencing field/column.

Right now we are using:

IF(Checked=1, TODAY())

But that doest not return the time, and is seemingly not a persistent timestamp. Ideally we’d have a formula that updates only when the referenced field/column is updated (checked/unchecked).

NOW() returns day and time.

Alas… The NOW function updates every time you refresh the sheet (pretty sure). What we need is a persistent timestamp that does not change until/unless the associated trigger field (checkbox) is modified (checked/rechecked).