Automation | Adding attachment instead of replacing it

[Paul_Plume]

Hi everyone,

I was delighted to discover recently the automation function within airtable, allowing me to remove part of the automation I had with third party providers (Zappier mainly).

I am however unable to solve one specific automation :

• I have a database with a unique line for each of my customer with its details and linked documents.
• Each customer is delivered a unique line in the database with a specific ID
• Each of them is also provided with a link to an airtable form that allow them to send me documents (in form of attachments) that I need (ex. copy of ID, copy of birth certificate, etc…)
• They provide these documents throughout the year and not in one time.

That is where I created the automation :
1- It takes all the attachment from the new record (each time they add a document, its create a new record)
2- it copy and past these attachments in the relevant fields in the main customer record
3- it deletes the new record used in step 1 to keep the database clean.

Zappier added the new attachments while keeping the existing one, Airtable automation deletes the existing one by replacing them with the new one.

Any way to go around this without going back to Zappier ?

Thanks !

Paul

[Kamille_Parks]

Set the Automation to include the list of attachment urls from the existing record, then add a comma, then the list of urls from the one about to be deleted.

[Paul_Plume]

Hello Kamille,

Thank you for your quick answer. I got the idea, but I did not find how to do it, there is no mention to existing records in the form :

Step 1 (Trigger) : Trigger the automation when record is created
Step 2 (Action) : Update record where Record ID matches for “Field #1”

There are no options to find a preexisting field, I can only select elements from the new record, do I need to go through a script ?

Thanks again,

Best,

Paul

[Kamille_Parks]

You can have one Update Record step to link the existing Customer record to the new form submission, then you can add a second Update Record step to do as I described above to add the url of the new attachment(s) to the list of existing attachment urls.