Automation Templates

[George_Woodruff]

It would be really nice to see automations be set to whatever conditions are specified, but allow it to still be built even if a ticket doesn’t exist that matches it yet. It’s a bit cumbersome to have to build a dummy ticket that meets each set of criteria just to move on to next steps.
being able to have the automation skip a field rather than stop would also be huge, I have multiple versions of the same automation now because I have to have one if Attachments is empty and one if it’s not versus just including attachments if present, or skip if empty.

[ScottWorld]

I agree that this would be very nice to have.

[Bill_French]

George_Woodruff:

allow it to still be built even if a ticket doesn’t exist that matches it yet

I guess I don’t encounter this issue because I tend to use script actions to build automated processes. But even so, I wonder if there isn’t a way to combine these patterns. Perhaps you should share screen shots of the case where multiple automations are required to handle these conditions.

[Richard_Foxwort]

George_Woodruff:

being able to have the automation skip a field rather than stop would also be huge, I have multiple versions of the same automation now because I have to have one if Attachments is empty and one if it’s not versus just including attachments if present, or skip if empty.

Ah! I am looking at the community forum now because I need to figure out why my automation keeps failing, but only sometimes - is it because when building a new record, the entire automation will fail if any one of the fields I’ve defined happens to have no value in it?

[Bill_French]

Richard_Foxworthy:

is it because when building a new record, the entire automation will fail if any one of the fields I’ve defined happens to have no value in it?

That depends on the how your automation was constructed. Perhaps you’d like to share more information here so that the experts can determine the cause.

[Richard_Foxwort]

Hi @Bill.French I’ve found that seemingly simple automations keep failing - eg automaton that triggers when a record enters a view, then create a new record in a separate table, and populate it with data from fields in that first record.

I suspect because in some cases one of those fields contains null value?

I had expected that the automation would create that new record leaving any empty fields null, and populating the other field for which there is data available.

[Bill_French]

Richard_Foxworthy:

then create a new record in a separate table, and populate it with data from fields in that first record.

Difficult to assess without knowing how [exactly] you are creating the new record and populating it with data from the first record. Is it a script automation?

[Richard_Foxwort]

Hi @Bill.French its not a script - It’s probably the simplest automation imaginable where it triggers from a record entering a view, then uses the ‘Create record’ action to create a new record in a different table and populate it with some data from fields in the original record that triggered the automation - this approach seems to fail if/when on of those fields is null.

[Bill_French]

Richard_Foxworthy:

this approach seems to fail if/when on of those fields is null.

Okay, I think it’s safe to say that any no-code automation instrumented purely by the Airtable UI and which references fields selectable in that UI to create the automation — should work even when encountering fields that are empty. Ergo, it’s reasonable to assume any empty fields referenced should create empty (null) values for the new target record.

If this were being written in a script automation, I would take care to ensure that null field values were accommodated to ensure the process wouldn’t crash, and therefore, so should the designers at Airtable.

That’s a lot of words to say - it’s probably a bug. :slightly_smiling_face: