Automations broken?

Gabi_Messina · ‎Sep 10, 2020

Yesterday I build a number of automations that I fully tested and worked fine but are now broken.

Trigger is new record in a view
Action is update record
What breaks is identifying the record. I want to update 1-2 records that are linked to the trigger record. Since you cannot use a link in the record ID column I have a look up of the record ID.

I now have 2 issues.

The links are showing as not valid (picture 1) where yesterday this was totally fine
I cannot click to add the values. There is a open symbol but when I click it, nothing opens.

Of course I publicly launched the process that relies on these automations today so it’s critical I get resolution to this ASAP.

Jeremy_Oglesby · ‎Sep 10, 2020

I think it might just be an issue with the lookup fields - they don’t seem to play nicely with automations when trying to retrieve values out of them.

Try making formula fields that just point at your lookup fields (pulls the values from the lookup fields), and use those in your automations instead.

Jeremy_Oglesby · ‎Sep 10, 2020

@Gabi_Messina
I answered within 10 minutes of you posting, and you seemed to indicate there was some urgency here… did this work to resolve your situation?

Gabi_Messina · ‎Sep 10, 2020

Yes! Thanks a million!

William_Muskus · ‎Sep 11, 2020

@Jeremy_Oglesby

Hello Jeremy
We are facing the same problem. Since this morning, most of our automations broke.
We were already pulling value (emails) from look up using a formula field. An automation copy/past this formula field value into a TxT column (so we have emails under a text format). An other automation was supposed to send an email to these emails and this automation is now showing an error and an empty “To” field : it seems the automation cannot pick data from a text field anymore.

This is a critical issue as this base is a client base, already rolled-out and our client is actually mad, as we are, that Airtable rolled out an update breaking former automations. Even our snapshots or previous back-up are now showing broken automation. We need assistance, please !

Han-Wen_Chang · ‎Sep 11, 2020

I encountered the same issue in the automation. I was trying to do cross table automation, and I cannot get the LinkedRecordId. I don’t know how to use formula field to achieve the same goal.

My setting is that: Table B has a linked field back to Table A. When I add an entry to Table B, I will specify the linked record in Table A, and I want Table A record update some value when the entry is added to Table B. How can I do that using formula field instead of linked field?

Gabi_Messina · ‎Sep 11, 2020

HI All,

Jeremy’s solution is currently working for me though it is a bit clunky.

I have my linked field.
I have another field looking up the record ID
I have a third column that is a formula of the record ID field.

I am now powering my automations using the formula field

FORMULA

ArielleEvans · ‎Sep 17, 2020

I’m trying this approach and it’s not working for me. The automation fails with the error message “The record does not exist.”

When I compare the Record ID that’s being output to the actual record ID in the target Table, it matches exactly, so I’m not sure why I’m getting the error.

Is this approach still working for others? Maybe there’s something I’m not formatting correctly?

Cedric_NIEUTIN · ‎Sep 18, 2020

Hi William,

Can you please explain me how you automate your copy/paste from a formula field into a txt column?

Right now, I’m stuck with an automation because of an email field I retreived from a lookup, that I transform with a formula. But when I use it in an automation, it doesn’t work (actually the mail doesn’t show up)

Bruno_Carvalho · ‎Sep 19, 2020

@Gabi_Messina, Airtable says that you cannot use lookups that return more than one result (as for that matter, the same happens to Rollups, even if you convert the array to a string).

You can check this out here: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050974153-Automations-Overview, in the last section.

This is unfortunate. I’m trying to automate a function that needs to send an email to more than one person, based on a lookup and it simply doesn’t work anymore.