Refresh Airtable for NOW() to Update?

[bitgiggy]

Hi everyone

I’m new to Airtable but loving it so far.

I’ve set up an automation to send a tweet at a scheduled date and time using the following formula I picked up from another post here.

IF(NOW()>{Posting Date},1,0)

Essentially, if the result of NOW() is later than my scheduled posting date/time, the automation will happen.

Do I need to refresh my Airtable for NOW() to update like I would in Excel?

I had set up a scheduled Tweet, but I noticed it hadn’t posted, but it did immediately once I went back into the Airtable base.

Thanks all!

[kuovonne]

Fuad_Bajjali:

My problem seems to be in the now() function and its irregular update pattern.

There really isn’t a way to get NOW() to update more predictably.

Fuad_Bajjali:

I have 2 records in my table, and the post_time_diff field for them shows 170 and 50 minutes respectively. Yet, nothing was posted so far in my FB Page.

This might be because an automation is not triggered if the record meets the condition before the automation is turned on. The record has to switch from not meeting the condition to meeting to condition while the automation is active.

[Brandon_Hatting]

Has anyone got a solution to this?

I also need to check a box when the start time is equal to the current time of day - 15mins.

I have everything working, the issue is the irregularity of a formula fields updating.

Does anyone know how to keep the field updated, at least every 5 mins?

I could have arbitrary automations that just updates every record every 5 minutes, which will update the formula field.

[ScottWorld]

@Brandon_Hattingh The way that I personally solve this problem is by using Make.com, which offers precise scheduling down to the minute.

[Diana_Kirby2]

@ScottWorld I’ve read this thread about 6 times now and am having trouble figuring out how to get the Make.com scenario to run properly. NOTE: I’m not using the airtable automation for scheduling as I need to run batch updates but I don’t want to have to manually run a batch update app.

My ultimate need is when the {date} is NOW- I need Airtable to send a message to Slack (instead of manually scheduling individual slack messages to post)

I’ve tried it a few different ways. Any chance you could help?

I’ve got a Date field in Airtable with a Date and precise time. I had set up the NOW formula and a True/false IF formula in Airtable to run if {date}=NOW, but having the not refreshing without a human working in the base problem.

In Make.com- I tried Search airtable records if Date is not empty NOT({Date}=‘’) then update the date record. I tried just setting a scenario in Make to run NOW so I can do a formula around it in Airtable, but it only ran in a few records or 1 record instead of all records in Airtable.

I think maybe the issue I’m having is understanding Make.com and how to set the record ID to the previously searched record.

Any help is appreciated as a solo team of 1 trying to optimize time with automations but spending more time trying to figure that out than it would be just to manually do things.

[ScottWorld]

What is the frequency that you want it to check for sending messages to Slack? Daily?

[Diana_Kirby2]

Great question. We run weekend events, so we schedule it out months in advance, but the messages need to be sent out over the course of 4 days, typically every 30mins-an hour

[ScottWorld]

Hmmm… there’s not a super-straightforward way of approaching this. I would probably recommend doing it hourly, because that will be the easiest to work with in Airtable.

The first thing you would need to do is create a dummy automation that triggers once an hour at the top of the hour and does ANYTHING. It could just search for records, and that’s it. You just want something to trigger at the top of the hour to “wake up your base” once an hour.

Then, you would need to create a formula in Airtable that compares the current date & current hour to your date field’s date & hour.

Something like this:

IS_SAME(TODAY(), {Your Date Field}, 'Hour')

That will yield the number 1 if the current hour is now.

Then, you would need to create a 2nd automation that is set to trigger whenever that formula field contains the number 1.

[Diana_Kirby2]

Thank you SO much @ScottWorld! Your saying it wasn’t straightforward also made me feel better :slightly_smiling_face:

So I actually had a solution, but what I needed was the dummy automation to wake up the base. I thought I had to update the records themselves for it to “wake up” so I was looking for automations to find the date records and update the date records with +1 second etc.

I’d already configured the formula to run TONOW() so it told me the difference in time between my scheduled date and time and the current date and time and an automation of “when that formula = 1 min” send to slack. But the Day/ hour formula you provided worked as well.

It was just missing the “wake up” automation and everything is working now. THANK YOU for saving me more headache spinning my wheels!

[ScottWorld]

That’s great to hear! You’re welcome! :partying_face: