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Nov 01, 2022 01:06 AM
Hi everyone,
I have been troubleshooting this for hours. This is an automation that used to work and suddenly it no longer does.
I have an automation, triggered by a button, It’s a simple form submission and the button triggers the creation of various new records in different tables. Many of these records are linked. The Links are written by the automation.
All of this works great. But for the last of the records, that is supposed to be created, it does not. The records IS created, however the linked records are not connected. I am linking to records that were created in earlier steps. And linking these records in the earlier steps was no problem.
I do not get error messages or anything. The link simply does not get written.
Any thoughts?
Nov 01, 2022 01:56 AM
Hi @Tobias_LGKR, difficult to troubleshoot without seeing exactly what you’re pasting into the linked records field. Can you share screenshots?
Nov 01, 2022 02:17 AM
Hi Rupert,
This is the automation tree:
The problem occurrs in: Create new Record: ONLINE MEMBERS
The linked record to CONTACT Record just does not get written in. But it exists. And I can link them manually.
Nov 01, 2022 02:30 AM
What looks suspicious to me is that you’re passing a name (apparently from a formula) to the linked record field. Are you sure you’re passing a record id there?
Nov 01, 2022 02:45 AM
No, I am not. I am passing the NAME field of the table.
a) the automation will not accept the record ID. I get an error.
b) I do this all the time all over the place.
Almost all of my NAME fields in my tables are Formula Fields, building the name of that record.
Nov 01, 2022 03:10 AM
If you want to link to a record by record name, the name needs to be the same. What’s the primary field in the table you’re linking to? Is it maybe calculated (aka a formula field)?
Why don’t you just pass the record id of the record in an earlier step?
In this example, the record passed was also created in a step before and I simply took the record id.
All in all, my guess is that you’re passing a name that doesn’t exist in the table you’re referencing.
Nov 01, 2022 03:29 AM
RECORD NAME is the primary field of the table.
I am doing the exact same thing all over the place. In an earlier step I am doing the exact same thing with the exact same CONTACTS table. I am writing the RECORD NAME field to the CONTACT RECORD link field. This exact same scenario is working in at least 3 dozen automations but all of a sudden it isn’t working here.
Nov 01, 2022 03:36 AM
Other ideas I would have and try to troubleshoot:
Are you testing your entire automation? If you’re only testing partially, the record from earlier might not exist anymore (as you might have deleted the record since it was only created for testing purposes).
For me it feels dangerous to pass a formula field as a primary field identifier. I’m usually working in Airtable scripts and I would always go for record ids as they’re definitely unique (whereas you could have two people with the same name for instance). So that is something I would look into as well. There is no reason to pass the name here, you could simply take the record id from the earlier step.
Nov 01, 2022 04:02 AM
I get an error message, when I try passing the ID
![Bildschirmfoto 2022-11-01 um 12.01.53|399x500](upload://i65
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Nov 01, 2022 04:39 AM
what’s the error message?