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Re: Zapier trigger for updated record or all records

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Christopher_Bis
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

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 on update/change/manual selection.

Can you advise any workaround because this is one of only two barriers to me moving a client to your platform.

69 Replies 69
Jeff_Frazier
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

So this isn’t a perfect solution, but I do have a manual workaround that actually worked out better for a given use case.

In my office we were wanting to use AirTable to store and centralize contact information and link it to various other records. We would be constantly adding information to records as we found out people’s cell phone numbers and additional email addresses etc. That makes it slightly risky to auto sync and update the information as someone could accidentally delete some information and clear it our of our database.

The workaround was to set the trigger to be a button push. Air table would then search for any record with “Yes” in the field “Ready for Update?”. It would update the contact information in the first record with Yes in that fields to google contacts, then after it updates it looks back for that same field (using the main ID# we use as a key to identify it) and updates the Yes to “Updated” and puts the timestamp of the button press into another field for records.

You do have to press the button once for each record you update, but it will work every time you press it, and it can repeated any number of times.

I know its not quite automated, but when its something as vital as contact information, it can sometimes be best to have a physical trigger to make sure that things don’t trigger improperly.

@openside is a short trial available to test this out?

Hi @Delali_Dzirasa @Nick_Duda (sorry I missed your post from a few months ago. never got a notification).

We offer a full refund in first 14 days if it doesn’t work out for you. Just reach out to our community site and submit a ticket and it will be refunded.

Thanks!

Dylan_Sather1
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hi y’all,

I’ve setup webhooks for new records and record updates using a combination of Airtable’s Slack notifications and Pipedream (think Zapier, but optimized for webhooks). It’s similar to the solution some of y’all have described, using Slack as a way to get record updates, but it’s also free.

End-to-end, If you add a new record to a base, you’ll get a webhook out with a JSON payload sent to a custom HTTP endpoint for that update:

[
  {
    "tableId": "tbl98fitgvmmAR8aX",
    "recordId": "recltHKU7vKAv7bhW",
    "updates": [
      {
        "field": "Name",
        "newValue": "NEW RECORD"
      },
      {
        "field": "Status",
        "newValue": "CLOSED"
      }
    ]
  }
]

I documented the setup in a Medium post:

https://medium.com/@dylan.sather/airtable-webhooks-with-slack-pipedream-8a394a763fa9

and this Pipedream pipeline:

https://pipedream.com/@dylburger/airtable-slack-messages-webhook-p_wOCgpB

(apologies for the formatting, the Community site wouldn’t let me include any direct links in this post)

I’d love feedback on whether this helps solve anyone’s issues getting webhook notifications for record creation / updates.

Feel free to personally reach out if you need help getting it working — more than happy to help.

Dylan

Steve_Singleton
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Airtable team, how we coming on this?

JulianStrong
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This fuctionality is soooo needed. It’s been over 3 years and still nothing…

@Airtable_Ops @Airtable_Team Can you please look at this?

It’s a lot simpler than that. To re trigger on an event, simply right click the line that you want to trigger again. Select duplicate. Delete the first line. That new line has a new record ID and will trigger once more to do the same function with zapier.

Sure, but this method is totally manual, we need soemthing that can run totally automatized.

L_Team
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Its now 10/29/2019… any progress Airtable?

Megan_Tanner
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

@Airtable, @Airtable_Ops

48 replies & 9.4k views and nearly 4 years without a single response.

Triggering upon record update is a vital feature that nearly every other app offers.

Please make this happen.

Christen_Costa
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

This is the best solution: Airtable Importer by Railsware.

  1. Import the Grid/Sheet into it’s own sheet
  2. Vlookup data accordingly in other sheets
SteelsmithHaus
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This is absolutely driving me nuts. It seems to periodically work, but as of right now I have some records that simply won’t trigger. I have a view created based on a filter to show only records updated in the last 10 min. This works most of the time as a Zapier trigger, but for some reason a group of records just won’t trigger.
We use the Airtable Importer for some of our projects, but it’s limited to sync once an hour which doesn’t work for this particular situation.
Does anyone have a workaround yet?

Darius_Safavi
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 on this thread.

Really require this feature - would be big game changer.

Has Airtable responded at all? What is the best workaround available today?

Is surprising that a basic feature like this is not currently available.

openside
10 - Mercury
10 - Mercury

@Darius_Safavi - you can check out our product: On2Air: Actions . It solves this problem and much more.

Darius_Safavi
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

great, thank you

I’ll have a look at your tool.

Jaosh_Sethna
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Haven’t done the job through zapier, but integromat.

Maybe you all want to have a look at my solution which I made to integrate airtable sheet with a wix website database. Same thing, but certain rules to follow for the integration to work. Have a check and let me know if it works for you’ll?

Thanks. Simple solution. Works in our very limited use cases where one or two Zapier tasks fail due to an error on our part and we need to rerun the task. Thanks for a simple solution that I didn’t see sitting right in front of my face.

No worries. It’s sad that they haven’t come up with a good retriggering mechanism yet. I use Airtable extensively in my appliance repair business and have been very happy with it.

Juan_Galati
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hello, how on earth this is not a feature yet? Year 2020 and can’t fire a zap based on a record update? Really it’s a very basic functionality that needs to be added.
Do you have an ETA on this? Thanks

KeithGibson
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

If Airtable has any control over this, consider this another vote for the feature. It is time-consuming and annoying to have to create a new view for each desired trigger once a record is updated.