Setting up an automation to find records

Learn how to build an automation using the “Find records” action to look for records matching specific conditions that you can specify within the action settings.

To create an automation to find records:

1. Open your Airtable home screen.

2. Open the base where you want to create an automation.

3. Click Automations.

4. Click + Create new.

5. Click + Create automation.

6. Click + Add trigger.

   1. Once clicked, the available triggers will display for you to choose from.

7. Click + Add advanced logic or action.

8. Scroll down in the menu that appears, then find and click the “Find records” option.

9. Under “Configuration,” first select the table where you would like to have the automation find records.

10. Next, click the dropdown to Find records based on one of these two options:

    1. Condition - This option allows you to use a set of specified conditions to find one or more records. Click + Add condition to start configuring the first condition. Continue this process as needed.

    2. View - This option is a good one to use if you have already set up specific conditions in a view in the underlying base. Click on Select a view and then click the view of your choice.

11. Add additional actions as needed.

12. Finally, test and turn on the automation. Be sure to test all of the steps in the automation that you are building. Once every part of the automation has tested successfully, you’ll be ready to turn the automation on. Find the “OFF” toggle and click it so the automation now appears as “ON” in green.

Adding additional actions after a find records action

After you've found the records you are looking for, you can add another action to determine what step to take with those records (as long as at least one record was found).

• You might consider using the “Sort list” action step to sort the output list of records in some expected way that makes sense for your workflow. (ex. sort the records by soonest due date, alphabetically, numerically ascending by order number, etc.)

• For example, if your "Find records" action found one record, you can choose to update that record using the update record action. Note that the "update record" action only supports updating a single record. Meaning, that you can use the "Find records" action to find and pass a single record to the "update record" action to update that record. For automations where multiple records might be found, use the repeating groups functionality to have the action perform multiple updates across multiple records.

• Another example workflow would be to find a list of records with impending dates, then use the "Send email" action to automatically email those records to a colleague. You are free to use any automation action that's most helpful for your workflow.

Understanding static and dynamic conditions

While setting up the "Find records" action you may notice a small cog icon ⚙ next to the condition that you are setting up. Clicking on the cog will bring up a menu to choose from static or dynamic values. Any conditions you set will default to the static conditions option, so anytime you want to use a dynamic condition you will need to change it to be dynamic via the cog menu.

• Static conditions are values that you manually add in order to look for the same value in a certain field every time.

• Dynamic conditions will change depending on the variables set up in a previous step in the automation you are building out. After clicking the "Dynamic" option you should see a blue and white plus sign icon appear in that condition's setup window.

Using found records from a view

If you find records based on a view, and then render those records as an HTML list or grid in an email, the records will be rendered in the same order as they were in the view. The way that fields have been ordered within that view will also be rendered in the same manner. This means that you can use the following workflow to send an email with a custom order for your records:

1. Create a view and sort the records and fields however you like.

2. Set up an automation, that when triggered, will use the "Find records" action to find records based on your previously created view.

3. Use the "Send email" action to send an email rendering the records you just found, as either an HTML list or grid, in the same order as they were presented in your view. In actions that include the option to render found records as a list or grid, such as the "Send email" action, there is an option to include a link to the view where the rendered list or grid of records is coming from. To learn more about the basics of sending emails via automations check out this article.

Previewing found records

When testing the "Find records" action, a preview of the records found based upon the view or condition(s) you have set will pop up.

• The preview you see will include all fields, even those hidden in a connected view. This is because the test is showing what our system sees on the backend. This is important because hidden fields may still be included in later actions.

• For example, if you include records found in the Find records action in a Send email action, then you will decide in the Send email action’s setup process which fields should be hidden in the email that is sent.

If you want to see the test result at a later point in time, then you can click the "View result" button in the Results drop-down

Limitations and dependencies

• Record limiting:

  • By default, a "Find records" action can find up to 1000 records per automation run.

  • A collaborator with creator permissions can change this from the action's configuration panel under Maximum record limit.

  • "Find records" actions created before the Maximum record limit setting was introduced find up to 100 records per run by default, not 1000. If an older automation is returning fewer records than you expect, open the action and set Maximum record limit explicitly.

• Conditional logic and linked record fields:

  • Linked record fields are supported when finding records based on conditions. They use the same filter engine as view filters, so you can use the following operators: has any of, has all of, is exactly, has none of, contains, does not contain, is empty, is not empty.

  • You can also use a dynamic value from an earlier step in the automation. Dynamic values used with has any of, has all of, is exactly, or has none of must resolve to a list of records.

  • Keep the following in mind:

    • contains and does not contain match against the linked records' primary field values as text, not against specific records. For most cases, use has any of instead.

    • If a dynamic value resolves to empty, the condition doesn't match any records. This applies to has any of, is exactly, contains, has none of, and does not contain. The condition is not skipped, so a step that expects results may return none.

    • Conditional logic (if/else)

      • Linked record fields are not currently supported as a comparison type in conditional logic. As of writing, you can still select a linked record field in the condition editor. We're updating the UI so linked record fields appear greyed out and clearly indicate they can't be used here.

FAQs

let numRecordsFound = input.config().numRecordsFound;
if (numRecordsFound < 1) {throw Error("No records were found.")}