Update Record with result of multiple Find Records not working if one is empty

[Lindsay_Kennedy]

Hey all, this is my first post, so I hope I do this right!

I have created an automation that, when a field box is ticked, a series of Find Records run. Each Find Record action gathers a list of records (people) that meet certain conditions. This is followed by an Update Record, that adds the linked records to a single field.

The Update Record step looks like this: Find Record 1 record ID, Find Record 2 record ID, Find Record 3 record ID.

This works perfectly unless one of the Find Records comes back empty, in which case the whole automation fails. Two the Find Records often come back empty, so this is a problem. I’ve played around with conditional actions, which is messy but it kind of works until a conditional action has an empty Find Record, where the automation stops and doesn’t move down to the next condition(s).

Can anyone think of a workaround? Thanks in advance!

[Mohamed_Swella1]

Hi @Lindsay_Kennedy

The reason this happens is the comma , so what you are sending in case Find Record 2 is empty for example is “Find Record 1, , Find Record 3” which causes the automation to fail.

Since you have 3 variables, this would be like 9 different paths? (havent done the math but i think it is within the range).

You would maybe need add a code step that fixes the output based on the inputs to add them all in one path

[Lindsay_Kennedy]

Thank you Mohamed, this is helpful.

What do you mean about a “code step”?

Can you think of any other way of gathering these records that doesn’t involve the potential for breaking?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hi Lindsay, if you’re on a Pro account you can add a Run a script step that would clean up the find record results for you so that you could use it in the Update Record step

A workaround that you could try would be to get your current automation to put the results of those find record actions into individual fields and then using a formula field to concatenate them together, and then have another automation that triggers when the formula field gets updated to paste the concatenated values into a linked field perhaps?

[Lindsay_Kennedy]

Thanks Adam, good ideas! I’ll give all these things a try