Auto Update Airtable in Stacker?

[ChristelleCurci]

Hi everyone,

I have an Airtable base with 17 collaborators.
2 of them are admins that check if everything is good on the base, update records, etc., and the rest of them put each day their working time through airtable forms. These times automatically generate an invoice for each of them at the end of the month with Zapier & Docupilot.

The users are all able to edit their personal times during the month so they can adjust the invoice before it’s generated & sent to the client. But they should not be able to see other’s people times. The fact is, in Airtable, as long as you are part of a table (even in read-only), you can see ALL the views and ALL the tables. So I cannot hide the hours of John for everyone except for him with personal views.

I partially solved this problem with Stacker, as I configured an interface which is different for every user. John will only see his clients and edit his own hours, and he will never see the clients nor the hours of Alex.
It’s pretty good actually, BUT on this tool, there is absolutely no auto update. When you make changes on the Airtable base, it does not automatically show up on Stacker, and if you make changes on Stacker, they don’t show up on Airtable, you need to go to Stacker settings and click on “Start Update” which I’d like to be automatized.
I need the changes to be updated almost in real time (maybe with 1min but not more) since I will have users working directly on Airtable (the admins) and those who’ll just enter and edit their times, who, besides, are far away than being digital natives and don’t really have the habit to use a computer — so it’s really complicated and not sustainable to ask them to update the records after or before making changes on Stacker.

I saw that Stacker is not implemented with Zapier, so I cannot set up a zap which could recognize and run the update automatically when a change is made. So, do you know, maybe, another tool like Stacker which could do the job, or a way to make auto updates on Stacker?

Thank you all
Greetings

[Sam_Davyson]

Hi @ChristelleCurcio! I’m one of the founders at Stacker, and we’d love to help you with this. Right now data does automatically update in Stacker from Airtable, but not instantly, we do these updates every 15 mins. Any changes made via Stacker are made instantly to Airtable.

We’re currently working on reducing this time delay (target is ~ 1 minute) and should have something available in the next couple of weeks. If you’d be interested in trying it out let me know!

[ScottWorld]

Yay! This is fantastic news! Thank you! :slightly_smiling_face:

I have a new client who will likely be signing up for Stacker in a few weeks. Hopefully, this will be rolled out be then! :slightly_smiling_face:

[ChristelleCurci]

Glad to hear that! Also thank you for clarifying how the updates exactly work. It makes more sense now!

[r_s]

Hello @Sam_Davyson

I have a question on this topic. Is there a way to create a condition (or other delay) in-between Airtable & the update sent to Stacker after a user changes a field value in Stacker?

Mods, if this is not the correct place for this question, please advise and I will move it.

My Use Case
When a user in Stacker drills down into a record, the record opens in “Edit Mode”. On this page, there are several fields that, when updated, affect the outcome of the other displayed fields for that record. These updates are what the user needs to make a buying decision.

The Issue
When a field is updated the data is being sent to AT, triggering an AT automation that updates other fields within the same record however, I believe AT is sending a RESULT back to Stacker before the AT Automation is complete.

The Result
This means that all fields affected by the newly updated field are not updated in Stacker and therefore displaying incorrect data, data the user relies on to make a buying decision.

Either through Airtable, Stacker, or perhaps even a third-party, do you know of a way to solve this? Without finding a way to do this, the fundamental purpose of my web-app is defeated. I don’t care if the solution is sloppy and cumbersome, just as long as the correct data is being displayed in Stacker after a user saves their changes.

I have put well over a year into the back-end of this project and to be at the finish line only to realize I cant find a way to display accurate data is devastating.

Thanks in advance for any help/ideas on the topic.

[Sam_Davyson]

Hi @r_s! You are right that Airtable’s API sends back data before the automations have run. At the moment we don’t have a way for Airtable to tell Stacker that there is new data, however we may develop new functionality for this in the future – it is an area we are actively investigating. I don’t have any fixed timeline unfortunately at this stage, but potentially in Q2 2021 we might have something that would help with this.

[AgileRook]

Hello there,

I almost finished building a stacker / Airtable automation for managing the writing, editing and publishing of written content. I have managed to persuade the client to use stacker and expect 100 records to be cycled through the system in the first week and it will ramp up to 10,000 by Dec.

When a record is updated, Airtable sends out an email but in about one in five times stacker is still showing out -of-date data on its end. Its often corrected in a few minutes but has taken up to 12 minutes in 1/15 delays.

After a bit of searching I found this thread.

Is there a way to get less then a minute updates on stacker?

Failing that, is there a way of stacker sending an indicator (by updating an Airtable field perhaps) when it does receive an update?

Other then making all emails sent by airtable on a 15 min delay, it there a way of dealing with this. The type of user isn't tech-savy and confusing them with out-of-data data will be the kiss of death for the satisfaction in this project !

I would appreciate any help or pointers !