Zapier (Airtable to Slack) when record is updated

[Jordan_Friedman]

Hi there, i use zapier to connect airtable to slack and mostly it is fantastic. Unfortunately, it appears zapier can only be triggered when a new record in a view is created or a new record is created in Airtable.

what i am trying to do is alert slack when a renovation date is updated. So it isn’t a new record or a new record in a view, it is just a cell that is being updated. Any ideas?

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Yep, you can definitely do this. A “View” is a filtering of records within a table to show only a particular set.

Let’s say you create a view that filters to show only records who’s renovation dates are on or after today:

If a record’s renovation date changes, such that it now shows up in this view because it is no longer filtered OUT of that view, then Zapier considers that a “New record in View”.

Here’s the catch:
Zapier CACHE’s that record’s ID as having been acted on as a new record in that view already. If that record LEAVES the view (gets filtered out due to another date change), but then later RE-ENTERS that view, Zapier will NOT act on it again - it will recognize the record ID as having already been acted on (zapped).

Hopefully that points you in the right direction. The point of it all is that it is possible to do the kinds of things you are wanting to do – you just have to be clever and careful with your use of views & filters, and how you set it all up. You have to think through all the implications of the system you set up before relying on it in live use.

Happy to answer further questions if you have them! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

[Jordan_Friedman]

ok! clever, there is something there. i definitely see that this would work for the first time someone enters in the renovation date. but as you mentioned it would not alert it again if someone subsequently changed the date

trying to think how that would work…trying to think how to trigger Zapier when someone just changes the already set reno date?

thank you for the help!!

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

FWIW, this is a commonly requested feature:

Zapier trigger - When record is updated Product Suggestions

There is a Zapier trigger when a field is created, and a Zapier action to update existing records. However, there is no Zapier trigger that uses a record being updated as a starting point. For example, I can have a Zap that says when a new customer is added to my base, add them to a Mailchimp list. When the new record is added, I have a single select called ‘Status’. When the customer is added, this is set to ‘Lead’. If this customer moves to ‘Dealt’, it would be great to able to move that cu…

Zapier trigger for updated record or all records Views

Love the Zapier integration, but without the ability to trigger on update/change/edit of a field, it’s pretty hard to keep other databases synced with Airtable - not sure if this my mistake or not. Additionally, I can’t move my system across to Airtable without the above feature or the option to run a Zapier zap on all database entires in a view/base. For example, if I want to email all my contacts, I can’t do that via Mail-Chimp etc, because the triggers only fire on creation of a record not o…

Timestamp for when checkbox has been checked Dates and timezones

I’m working on a trouble ticket table that keeps track of support for our users. I want to be able to track when a box was checked. So I have a “Followed up” checkbox field and I’d like to track the time from when the record was created to when the box is checked. I’m pretty sure I know how to figure out the difference in time with a formula but I’m having a hard time getting the timestamp of the box being checked. I can see the time in the expanded history view but there’s no way to reference i…

AND, Airtable is aware of the need for a “last-modified” sort of functionality and has stated (albeit, quite a long time ago) that they are working on it:
https://community.airtable.com/t/last-modified-timestamp/8595?u=jeremy_oglesby

[Felix_K]

Hi Jeremy,

you stated that AirTable will cache the record ID as “already acted on”.
Do you have any information about the “lifetime” of that cache?

In our usecase, we maintain an overview of contracts which need to be renewed anually (12 months).
I have a view in place which shows contracts close to their end date, and send out notification emails based on that (AirTable to GMail).

So after extending a contract for another year, the sales person would update the AirTable record with “today”'s date and rely on it showing up in the filtered view in a little more then 11 months again (and thus being notified by mail).

Now, my question: In 11 months’ time, will this record be “new” in the filtered view and trigger the mail zap again?

1000 thanks in advance!
Best regards,

Felix

[openside]

It will still be cached. Zapier stores it forever (so it’s not really a cache). However, our On2Air: Actions product overcomes that limitation and will trigger a many times as needed.