Problem with automation: attachment url is disallowed

You can no longer refer to formula fields for attachment URLs. You will need to pull the expiring URL from the attachment field itself, not a formula field.

Some information on this is located here: https://support.airtable.com/docs/airtable-attachment-url-behavior

This can be done with Airtable’s native automations, with scripting, or with using an external automation tool like Make’s advanced automations & integrations for Airtable. Airtable’s article above mentions using Zapier, but I do not recommend using Zapier.

Make is significantly cheaper than Zapier, yet it is infinitely more powerful and customizable than Zapier. I’ve written an entire post here about Make vs. Zapier. 

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources.

p.s. If you have 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 consulting — ScottWorld

the automation is based on conditions to activate and consequently send the email, one of these conditions is that "documents" is not empty and that the date of the document corresponds to the following month. It then automatically takes the url of the document and attaches it to the email, this worked until a month ago. being new to the airtable world, how can I fix this?

Hi @ScottWorld , could you please tell us why you don't recommend using Zappier?

@Rafael_Oliveira 

The main problems that I have with Zapier are best described by discussing the main advantages that Make has over Zapier:

1. Make has none of the limitations that Zapier has. Just as one example out of hundreds of examples, Zapier only allows 3 conditional branches, whereas Make allows unlimited conditional branches. Also, Make has a purely visual drag-and-drop environment that makes it much easier to visualize entire automations.

2. Make is SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful than Zapier. Probably a million times more powerful. Lol. For example, Make has an entire library of hundreds of functions & tools built into the platform that let you manipulate your data -- including groups of Airtable records at once, which Zapier doesn't allow -- in ways that Zapier doesn't allow at all.

3. Make is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than Zapier, even though is is way more powerful than Zapier.

4. Make has much better tech support than Zapier.

However, the one downside to Make is that there can be a bit of a learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video for Make, along with providing the link to Make’s free training courses. There are also many Make experts hanging out there who can answer other Make questions. 

Hmm could you try just re-setting up your automation and giving that a shot?  It seems to be working fine for me and perhaps setting the attachment field again would help

Link to base

I tried but it doesn't work. The test passes without problems, but trying the automation fails giving me the error of the url not allowed. I just don't get it. I don't enter the url of the attachment directly, but it takes it automatically because I have set conditions to ensure that the automation starts. This worked until last month.

I am having the same issue with one of my bases.  It isnt happening with others.  I noticed the interface for uploading images changed over the weekend but other than that.

It is set to email when it enters a view, I tried remaking the automation.

This JUST started happening to me as well!

It's been working forever, and now in the last week or so it stopped working!

If this changed in November of 2022, why is my automation breaking now?

Also, why does it work if I run the automation in a test, but not in the live environment?

Just happend to one of our automation, working in test , but failed to run in live.

Any ideas are welcome

Same here!

I have the same problem

I am also experiencing this issue on automations that have been working fine for 2+ years. I have a good handful of automations, many of which are complex so just redoing them all is an expensive try when it may not even fix the issue. 😢 Airtable Support please help!! (I have a ticket in as well but no response so far). 

Thanks!  

Please post here if anyone is able to find a solution.

We shouldn't have to spend a ton of time on workarounds for bugs in Airtable.

I also opened a support ticket for it.

Sorry to revive this, but @ScottWorld , does Make allow for JavaScript or python to be written inside of it? Genuinely asking. If not, then I would say Zapier is much more powerful.

I’ve written up a brief summary of Make vs. Zapier here: https://air.tableforums.com/t/make-vs-zapier/737

You can run JavaScript or Python in any Make scenario by using Make’s 0CodeKit automations & integrations.

0CodeKit offers lots of other cool functionality as well... much of this functionality is natively built into Make's 132 0CodeKit modules, but you can go beyond those 132 modules as well with the 0codeKit "Make An API Call" module.

I have several automation that creates and updates records fill in Attachment field, with image, video and PDF, I have this record being created/updated with Script and with Create/Update Airtable actions, and I never got any issue.

I suggest you create another Base/Table with the process and see if the problem still happens. If so, you share this new Base/Table and we could analyse it deeply.

I have the same issue.  However, if I wait a few minutes then try and send the email again, it works.

My theory is that the upload of the attachment is still happening behind the scenes and when the automation runs it is partially uploaded...and fails.  But if there is a delay long enough for the file to be fully uploaded, then it works... (I might be totally wrong here...but it makes sense to me)

So now I need to work out a way to create a delay in an automation so that when a record is created it waits a few minutes before it tries to send the email...

I wish that Airtable automations had a module that just allowed a delay!!!!

I ran into this issue today. I had an automation set to run when a record is created - the automation sends an email with an attached document that is part of the newly created record. The only workaround I found was creating a formula field that calculates in minutes the time between when the record was created and NOW(). Then I setup a view that filtered out records that were created less than 3 minutes ago in attempt to give time for the attachment to load and set the automation trigger to when records enter that view. This worked and I'm no longer seeing the error message.