Struggling With A Simple Automation (Status Change + Form Sent via Email)

[Tahir_Jetter]

Hi All,

I tried to get feedback from ChatGPT but it steered me wrong. Lol. 

Long story short, I'm trying to create an automation whereby, when a checkbox in a given record's checkbox field is checked:

• A status field in the corresponding record is changed from "Upcoming" to "Initiated" (I assumed this was "Update Record"). 
• Then, a pre-made form that I have created is automatically e-mailed to a recipient (whose e-mail is already rolled up/selected on another field) on the same record. 

Where I'm stumped is -- on the update record action, it keeps asking for a mandatory unique record ID, and I'd like this change to instead apply to any record for which a user checks a checkbox in the checkbox field, not just a single, identified record. 

Any thoughts? Am I doing this incorrectly?

ChatGPT said Airtable has some kind of mapping feature that could help me, here, but I couldn't find it. 

 

[Ben_Young1]

Hey @Tahir_Jetter! 

The Update record automation action needs to know which record to update in order to successfully complete the update operation.
In order to update the record that triggered the automation run, you need to insert the record id of the relevant record.
To do this, you will insert the variable token from the automation trigger.
Here's a quick reference for you:

[Tahir_Jetter]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your response! I guess what confuses me, here, is — what happens when I want this same automation to be able to be applied to other records? Is the system iterating through other records with the check box checked or is it just focused on the record for which the record ID is identified?

I guess I’m wondering whether identifying the record ID locks me into just dealing with just one record, here, and how I can apply this automation to multiple, instead.

[Ben_Young1]

Is the system iterating through other records with the check box checked or is it just focused on the record for which the record ID is identified?

---

The automation run will be scoped to only the single record that triggered the run.
Automation runs are asynchronous. If you were to bulk update 100 records to trigger the automation, you wouldn't see a single automation run. You would see 100 unique automation runs that are scoped only to their respective records.

[Ben_Young1]

If you want to do a bulk operation, then it would be better to implement a timed interval trigger instead.
Each hour (or whatever satisfies your requirements), the automation will fire.
Then you'd have it conduct a Find records action that would query the table for all records with the checkbox set to true.

From there, you'd set a looped action group that would update each record found in the search.

[Tahir_Jetter]

Hi Ben,

Thanks. So just so I understand what you’re saying, even though I’ve identified 1 record ID in the setup of this automation, if I were to click the checkbox field for other records, those should individually trigger the same automation to proceed for each of those records as well?

[Ben_Young1 · Accepted solution]

That's correct.
All the automation runs are compartmentalized and locally scoped.

[Tahir_Jetter]

Great Scott! This is amazing Ben, thank you!