Automations failing due to record being deleted? Cancel run if record no longer exists?

[oreocereus]

I have a base that is largely used for planning.

I have a lot of automations. Often one action sets off a chain of 4-5 automations.

Because I use this base for planning, records get deleted often as part of my workflow (i.e. I change my mind).

An unfortunate, unexpected irritation with this is that reasonably often, an action will set off an automation > I delete the record before the automation is finished (these are usually simple automations "if Record A Field A = x, update Record B field A" - most are not long and convoluted).

And so, I have a significant and frequent number of "failed automation: record not found" emails and notifications.

Is there any way to prevent this happening?

[Mike_AutomaticN · Accepted solution]

For sure. The final work around will depend on how your automations are set. But one alternative could be to use condicional logic for the actions. E.g. Have the action execute if amount of records found for a “find records” is > 0. Or something like that. 

[ScottWorld]

The solution above should hopefully work for you, but based upon your posting history regarding Airtable’s automation limitations, you’re probably at the point in your Airtable journey where you are ready to graduate to using Make’s advanced automations for Airtable.

Make offers no-code automations that are hundreds of times more powerful & customizable than Airtable’s automations, including trapping for errors, having unlimited conditional paths (including “AND” paths), no limit on the number of automations, no limit on the number of automation runs, the ability to perform calculations within your automations, and thousands of more features.

All of the limitations that you’ve encountered with Airtable’s automations over the last several months are all natively solved with Make.

Now, if your conditional paths are simple enough, Airtable’s native automations may still work for you, but you may hit up against the other limitations of Airtable’s automations when you do that: 

(1) Airtable doesn’t allow combining of repeating groups and conditionals within the same automation, (2) Airtable doesn’t allow going down multiple conditional paths in a single automation, (3) Airtable doesn’t allow any universal automation actions to come after the conditionals have been evaluated, and if you try to create multiple different automations to workaround these limitations, you could hit into (4) the very limited 50 automation limit or (5) the very limited 25 action step limit.

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

Hope this helps!

— ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

[oreocereus]

Thanks! Did something similar-but-different, which I think will work.

[oreocereus]

Hi Scott. Yes, Make does seem a lot more powerful. Airtable's limitations are frustrating. All your points are issues I've been frustrated by. I am constantly tweaking and re-optimising to deal with the 50 automation limit due to the other issues you mention! 

Unfortunately this is a charity project. I'm donating a lot of my time because, well, I founded the charity.

We're at our budget limitation for paid software, and at our scale, we really can't justify spending even more on data management and planning tools. 

[ScottWorld]

Ah, I hear you. One thing to keep in mind if you keep hitting roadblocks with Airtable’s automations is that Make is only $9 per month for 10,000 operations in a month, so it’s relatively cheap.