Incoming webhooks for automations ✨

[Jason]

On top of other releases this week, we have another exciting new feature - incoming webhooks for automations!

With the new incoming webhook trigger you can connect Airtable with many of the tools and products that you and your team use (whether a third-party service or an internal tool).

Normally, you’d have to write custom code and spin up your own infrastructure in order to handle webhooks, but now, whenever an event fires in another product, you can tap into the full power of Airtable Automations to handle it accordingly.

How it works

The incoming webhook trigger will create a unique URL that you can use to trigger an Airtable automation. You can use this URL with another service’s webhook configuration UI, or use it directly from your own custom code (e.g. from an internal tool). When Airtable receives a request at this URL, we’ll then trigger the automation that you configured (just like our other triggers).

This enables you to integrate with services that Airtable doesn’t currently support, or to programmatically trigger automations, preventing you from having to write custom code or manage your own infrastructure.

You can learn more about using the incoming webhook trigger in our Support Center.

View support article →

[Bill_French]

Brian_Gumm1:

or the entire JSON payload, to an input variable that a subsequent script action can process.

I think this is possible now - this screen shot shows the body received via a Tookan webhook where custom_fields is a collection of JSON objects that contain a variety fields. One need only map this into a variable in your script action using input.config() and away you go.

[Brian_Gumm1]

When I click on a “collection”-like area of the JSON payload, I only get the “Continue >” link to traverse farther into the JSON payload, not the option to Insert it into the input.config() variable…

[Bill_French]

Brian_Gumm1:

not the option to Insert it into the input.config() variable…

Yes, that constraint still exists and it’s just dumb. At the very least a dot should give you the body.

Workaround…

Once the webhook is received, I tease out the id of the data source and then perform an immediate call back into the source of the webhook call, thus capturing the full body.

[Brian_Gumm1]

Hmmm…great little trick - I think it will work in my use case as well!

(But yes, still: Just pretty plz give us the ability to assign the payload to an input variable for crying out loud! :grinning_face_with_sweat: )

[Tom_Keysers]

Seconding (read: bazillioning) the request for the ability to assigning the full json payload to a variable. Shouldn’t be that hard, right.

[Ambroise_Dhenai]

I opened Is it possible to read a webhook data from a script? thinking what I wanted to do was rather straightforward, but no, Airtable doesn’t cease to surprise me with their design that looks like it’s been thought-out by a 2 months intern.

Accessing the whole payload from a script seemed like such a common need for anything a bit dynamic, but not, that’s not even possible.

I’m gonna build my own webhook outside of AT, not worth wasting my time on this.

[Bill_French]

Ambroise_Dhenain:

Airtable doesn’t cease to surprise me with their design that looks like it’s been thought-out by a 2 months intern.

LOL. I’ve said this repeatedly in very similar terms.

Is it possible to read a webhook data from a script? Automations

If I understand your objectives clearly, there is a way and I do this a lot in a number of systems. In this screenshot, take a close look at the left pane containing input parameters into the script action. You can see that two elements from the webhook post (the first step in the automation) includes values from the body of the HTTP POST. [image]

[Cameron_Mason1]

@kuovonne This was very helpful. I do have a question, however.

How would you handle this the values were null? Sometimes my payload inlcudes a fruit list and sometimes it doesn’t.

[ScottWorld]

Airtable’s incoming webhooks are currently very basic & limited.

For full control over incoming webhooks & incoming mailhooks (i.e. incoming email messages), no matter what format the data is coming in as — and then handling the incoming data in any way that you’d like — you would need to use a tool that gives you this sort of control.

The tool that I personally use for this with my Airtable clients is Make.com:

Make Webhooks

They also have full Airtable integration:

Make

Airtable Integration | Workflow Automation | Make

Connect Airtable to sync data between apps and create powerful automated workflows. Integrate over 1000 apps on Make.

I’m sure there are many other tools out there that do the exact same thing and are probably even better than Make, but that is just the tool that I use and am familiar with, and it is considered a low-code tool.

[kuovonne]

Cameron_Mason1:

How would you handle this the values were null? Sometimes my payload inlcudes a fruit list and sometimes it doesn’t.

That is for the script to handle. It is common for null values to be omitted from a payload to reduce the amount of data transferred. If there is no fruit list in the payload, then there are no fruits in the list.