Fat finger failsafes for a user triggered automation

[kazkazkaz]

We need to take applicants and manually approve them. We intend to do this by using a status dropdown field to kick off automation when changed from 'Pending' to 'Approved'. 

We are concerned about accidental human error selections triggering the automation. Is it possible to implement any of the following mitigations:

1. Prompt a user, upon input, to confirm their input before committing
2. Build a pause into the automation, during which changing the status back to 'pending' will abort the automation. 

[ScottWorld]

You may want to trigger your automations on a schedule instead of triggering automatically.

To answer your 2 questions:

#1 is not possible.

#2 is only possible through scripting or through Make, which is a no-code automation platform for Airtable that lets you “sleep” your automation for X number of seconds. After the sleep is over, you can evaluate whether the status has been changed back, and abort your scenario.

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources there as well. For example, to instantly trigger your Make scenarios from Airtable with a script instead of a button, check out this thread. If you have more questions about Make, I would post them in that forum, which is where several Make experts are hanging out.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld