Importing attachments via api and zapier

[Caspian_Almerud]

Hey everyone!

I’ve set up an automation in Zapier that sends signed agreements from our service to Airtable. I’ve gotten everything to work as I want it to, but not all of the PDF:s are attached in airtable. I can’t really see a pattern to why the documents wouldn’t show up.

From what I can see in the version history of the rows that aren’t, the PDF has been there but then instantly removed. It seems the problem lies with Airtable as the document shows up, but I can’t figure it out. Here’s what it looks like in version history:

Any ideas on why the document gets deleted?

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

The behavior you are seeing is typical when the source url for the attachment is not publicly available or is a “viewer” url. Airtable receives the attachment url and updates the record to say there is an attachment, but then Airtable fails to access the actual file and deletes the attachment.

You can test if a url should work by trying to view it in an incognito web browser window. If the file does not show up or shows up in a viewer, the attachment will fail. Look for a different public url.

[Caspian_Almerud]

Hi!

Thanks for the input. It seems logical, but then the question that arises for me is why are some of the same documents attached and some not? Do you know? :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ll dig in to see if I can find a setting for public URL:s in my digital signing service, that might solve it all!

[kuovonne]

If the attachments sometimes work and sometimes don’t, you may need to introduce a slight delay between the creation of the file and when you try to upload it. If you still get intermittent issues where it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, your can add retry logic. If you still have issues after all if that, there isn’t much you can do.

[Caspian_Almerud]

Hmm, can you tell me more about the retry logic? How would I go about that?

[Caspian_Almerud]

@kuovonne I think I solved it by delaying the push from the agreement signer to airtable. Will check throughout the day as contracts are flowing in. Thanks for the help, really valuable!