Updating Multiple Records Triggered By Date

[Anonymous]

Hi Again Everyone. I had accidentally marked my post as solved but it is not, I will repost what I am struggling with

Below is my issue, I have been told about a "record ID" though I am unsure if this will work as I am trying to update a whole column of "Single Select" Statuses from "Booked" to "Completed" 

Hi, I am trying to create either a script or automation that will detect multiple records for me based on specific conditions. Then automatically changing their status

I have my trigger set up, If a record has a scheduled date that was one day ago and the status on it is "booked"

I want to then update anything under these conditions to "completed" 

I am having issues setting up the "updating" feature. 

my configuration is as shown. I have NEVER done this type of automation, so I am extremely confused on this. 

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[ScottWorld]

For Record ID, you need to choose the "Airtable Record ID" from the triggering record. You are choosing "Status". You will need to choose "Airtable Record ID".

However, you have a larger problem going on, which is that your automation won't run at all when you expect it to run.

Automations don't automatically check for things that happened one day ago, unless you change your trigger to be at a scheduled time. Then you would need to perform a find for the records you're looking for, and loop through those records, and take actions on those records.

Otherwise, automations will only run when something changes in the record or the record enter a view.

So your other ways of triggering the automation would be to: (1) change one of the triggering conditions in the record, (2) create a formula field to trigger the automation, or (3) create a filtered view to trigger the automation as well.

You could also (4) manually trigger the automation by adding a checkbox field or a single-select field that you manually change when you want to trigger your automation.

But in your case, setting up a filtered view might be the easiest way of setting this up, and using the view to set the trigger. I would probably recommend that method for you, since you are new to Airtable and this is the easiest way to set it up.

For those more advanced options (changing the trigger to be at a scheduled time, or setting a formula field to trigger the automation), I was just talking somebody through those in this thread: https://community.airtable.com/t5/automations/conditional-trigger-to-send-emails-but-in-better-time-...

p.s. If your company has a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld 

[Anonymous]

Hey Scott

Thank you for the response! I really appreciate it. Diving into the world of airtable and database creation can be challenging. Though I am glad to have a community I can ask for help. To further on this, I will provide an updated response. I have taken your advice into account. Following my Trigger, I have then added another response to find records where "status" is "booked" (single select) and "date scheduled" is "1" "days ago"

This has now allowed for me to pull up a result of all appointments that were done the day prior and have a "booked" status. I am now struggling with the updating of these. Does Airtable allow for me to change all of the records that have this criteria? Or will I have to individually change the single select option to "completed"?

Where this is fairly meticulous and specific, I am trying to nail this on the head. I have only been using this platform for two days. So I am still under a learning curve. 

Again, thank you for your help! 

Noah

[ScottWorld]

Hi @Anonymous,

You're welcome, and welcome to the world of Airtable!

There are at least 3 other highly active Airtable communities you might enjoy — there is an Airtable community on Facebook (I'm not active on Facebook), there is TableForums, and there is the BuiltOnAir Slack group. There is also the weekly BuiltOnAir podcast.

That's great that you were able to successfully change your trigger and then perform the "find records" action!

To answer your question, the next step is to add a "repeating group" to loop through all the records that were found in your "find records" action.

Then, you can perform the "update record" action for each item in the loop by choosing to update the "current item" from the repeating group.

[Anonymous]

Hi Scott,

Again thank you for your help today. I really appreciate it.

I still am running into some issues after what you had provided me. I know that after I create the "find record" section where I can find a list of the criteria that is required. After this, I created a Repeat, but I am still fairly lost in the process. I will attach photos in order to provide further detail. 

This is what I have so far 

Above is my configuration for updating. However I do not understand why my configuration will not allow my automation to change status's to "Completed" 

Are you able to further assist me? 

If not that is okay, I can seek advice elsewhere as you have already helped a tremendous amount.

Thanks again,

Noah

[ScottWorld]

Hi @Anonymous,

You're welcome!

Thanks for posting the screenshot, too. You're almost there.

For your "Update Records" action:

Do you see where it says "Record ID" in your screenshot?

Every record in Airtable has its own internal Record ID that Airtable automatically assigns to it.

But you can only insert one record ID into your "Update Record" action. You are currently putting in the ENTIRE LIST of record ID's of everything that was found in the previous action.

What you will need to do is get rid of "List of records", then click on the blue + sign, then choose "Current Item" on the left, then choose "Airtable Record ID" on the right.

When you're done with that, it will look like the screenshot below.

That's all you need!

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help. 

I am now under the assumption that Airtable does not allow users to change multiple records using this automation feature? From what it appears, I am only able to change one record. 

[ScottWorld]

No, that is an incorrect assumption.

This entire conversation has been all about how to setup your automation so that users can change multiple records using the automation feature.

To summarize what we have discussed: You can update multiple records at once using the automation feature.

As we have previously discussed, you need to loop through your records to update all of your found records in one automation. You already figured out the looping in your screenshot above, so that part is already finished on your end.

Your ongoing problem is that you have never specified the Record ID properly, which I then showed you how to fix in my screenshot above.

Once again, to repeat the instructions that I said above:

Within your "Update Record" action where it asks for "Record ID", click on the blue + sign, then choose "Current Item" on the left, then choose "Airtable Record ID" on the right.

That's all you need to do to solve your problem.

Otherwise, it sounds like you could really benefit by collaboratively working one-on-one with an expert Airtable consultant like myself. If you'd like to hire me to help you with your Airtable development, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

[Anonymous]

Hi Scott,

As you had told me, I have updated the record ID to the specific status I wish to change for records that meet these conditions. However  I am still having issues.  I will have to watch a video or something, because I am not understanding what to do.

Thanks for the help though.

[jennieevans]

I am running into a similar issue. I am trying to follow these instructions and get the error that the record doesn't exist. Did you get a solution to your problem?