Using airtable to track issues (maintenance needed or equipment down for instance) on a manufacturing floor.
I’d like to be able to set a notification (most likely an sms) when a specific field changes in a table. The field would be a status field with levels.
Levels:
Level 1- light
Level 2 - moderate
Level 3 - severe
Complete
Each level would have a broader list to notify as the level escalated. Is there a way to do this with native capabilities? Napier? API?
Any of the major SaaS integration services would probably be suitable — Zapier, Integromat, maybe IFTTT, which I’ve not used extensively. There are literally dozens more; just Google “alternatives to” any of these three to get started.
What you’ll probably have to do is define a group of views filtered to display trouble tickets at each level of escalation and then use the integrator’s ‘new record in view’ trigger; there’s no way to trigger on an arbitrary change in status. You’ll also most likely find the service loses visibility of tickets that are escalated and then de-escalated, as most (all?) services can’t catch a record’s second (and subsequent) entry into a view.
As far as notifications go, any of these services offers integration with a frankly stupefying array of messaging and notification services; somewhere out there is one right for your need and wallet. You may also want to look at the current suite of Airtable Blocks. While I’ve no direct experience with them, there are several directly supporting automated or assisted contact and notification from within Airtable. While I’m not sure which, if any, can be triggered by an integrator, they could at least provide contact functionality for your technicians to use directly.
[Weirdly, I envy you: I first became truly involved in management system design and integration by whaling on Sprint/Telenet’s old data trouble ticketing system, seeing what Quality Management miracles one might wring out of its data. (To give you an idea both of how long ago this was and how deeply enmired in it I was, I wrote my own virtual memory manager to let me manipulate — horrors! — datasets measuring several whole megabytes on a PC with 640kb of RAM.) For years, I kicked around the idea of trying to build a commercial trouble ticketing system some day — until it dawned on me that they, like the ‘big iron’ network management beasts I later helped design and build, just don’t exist anymore…]
What you’ll probably have to do is define a group of views filtered to display trouble tickets at each level of escalation and then use the integrator’s ‘new record in view’ trigger; there’s no way to trigger on an arbitrary change in status.
That’s the key right there.
As far as notifications go, any of these services offers integration with a frankly stupefying array of messaging and notification services; somewhere out there is one right for your need and wallet.
Isn’t that the truth! Stupefying. My eyes glaze over when I look at these. We are bound to an old mainframe system where I work. It seems to me that we are in the midst of a revolution on how companies get things done by using decentralized SaaS. There are many services out there that do exactly what you want done - so much better than what you could roll yourself.
Thanks for the tip on the views.
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