Automation help - variables

[Hannah_Morgan]

Hello! I have two tables: “Projects” and “Tasks”. I’m wanting to create an automation to do the following:

Trigger: When a record is created in “Projects” table
Action: Create value {Record Name} in X field in “Tasks” table

Basically, the name of the record in the project table should update a field in the Tasks table. I would like the automation to create a new field value within a dropdown field and the value name should be taken from the trigger record name (i.e. the project name).

From what I could see, the only way to achieve this is to have the action be to update a field within an existing record, so I created a dummy record. This is what I’ve created:

When I run the test, it shows the field in the dummy record is updated with the project name as expected. But when I go and create a new project record, the automation shows as running successfully, but the field in the dummy record is empty.

Am I overcomplicating this/approaching this wrong? Appreciate any help!

[Hannah_Wiginton · Accepted solution]

Hey Hannah!

So you want the name of the Project to be the name of the Task also?

Or you want the Task to be another name and then contain a link to the Project?

[Hannah_Wiginton]

What may be happening is that you need to create a trigger based on a view or condition. It’s triggering too quickly with the When a record is created trigger.

Create a field in your table called Create Tasks that contains a single select value of ‘Create tasks’

Then use the When a record matches conditions trigger

That way the tasks are only created once you have the record completed.

Then, you can add your Task info and tie it back to the Project

[Hannah_Morgan]

Hi Hannah! Thanks for the reply :slightly_smiling_face: The action isn’t to create a task, but rather update a field. The field is a dropdown field and each value is the name of the project.

When I create a new project record in the project table, I’d like a new dropdown value to be added with the name of the project.

The idea is to create a kanban board that is staked with the project name, and each related task is in its respective column. I’m using a link field to relate tasks to projects, but I can’t use a link field to stack cards in a kanban board, only dropdown fields can be used, so the “Project” dropdown field is a bit of a crappy workaround.

The issue is, I don’t want to have to be updating this dropdown field every time a new project is created, so I’m trying to automate that step.

It feels super convoluted, so maybe there’s an easy way to visualize all projects and the related tasks? The end goal is to see all projects and their related open (not completed) tasks, as well as projects that don’t have related tasks.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Ok gotcha!

You CAN create a field value in your select field, but not without creating a record.

Unless there’s a way with scripting. But that’s beyond my skill set.

Is it Project a unique value? like ‘Client A Website Design’?

It might be better to use a Status select field and then create a Kanban view that’s filtered by an ‘empty’ and ‘Open’ status.

Single select fields are typically used for set values that you can re-use multiple times, rather than unique values like your Project names.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

You’ll probably need to do multiple Kanban views if you do it this way.

or try the new Interfaces and use a filter. Though it doesn’t have Kanban.

[Hannah_Morgan]

Amazing! Thanks, Hannah :star_struck: yeah, I’d ideally like to not use my convoluted workaround as it’s prone to issues with all the automations :grinning_face_with_sweat:

Thank you for suggesting the new interface designer!! That looks like pretty much what I’m after. I just really want to see all projects and tasks in one view to see what’s coming up next for each project.

Follow-up question with that, do you have any idea if it’s possible to filter what tasks pull through? Ideally, I’d just want to see the ones that have not been completed yet:

Appreciate all your help!!

[Hannah_Morgan]

Ohh I figured it out by using the grid view for the tasks!! This is so exciting!!! haha

[Hannah_Wiginton]

woohoo! awesome! :clap:

Glad you found something that might do the trick.

You can use the Grid view as a great option.

You can also add a Filter element (see top left) so you can switch between the Status or any other Filter you might find useful.

Just click Add element in the bottom left and choose Filter :grinning:

[Hannah_Morgan]

Oh cool, yeah that would be ideal because I’m not able to add tasks from the grid task view. However, I’m not able to connect the filter to the tasks element :confused: