Hi all,
could you please help me trouble shoot an automation. It’s seemingly simple but has an error I can’t explain.
Steps the automation takes:
- find a record (works as expected)
- updates that record (works as expected)
- sends an e-mail with the body of the email being the content of a summary field from that record (doesn’t entirely work as expected)
The updated field is a link to another table. Once that link is established there’s a lookup field with specific info. That is included in the summary field (as you can see that field is basically a sentence filling in the corresponding data).
Now the email sends and the summary field has the first part correct - the actual link field name which it updated in the first step. The actual number in that summary field if you look on the screenshot.
But what’s missing is the info from the lookup field.
The only explanation I can come up with is, that there is a lag between linking and the lookup actually filling in. Is that possible? And if so can I do something within the same automation or do I have to then build a lag in a separate automation?
Any pointers very welcome. Thanks
How are you triggering your automation?
Hi Scott, It’s a set time, midnight 2 am.
If you try presetting the linked field and then manually running the automation yourself, does it work properly?
If so, that could indicate that there is a lag, although I haven’t heard of that happening before in Airtable. It’s definitely possible, though.
Hi, yes it does work properly, also when testing. I’m busy with adjusting the text now and it works just fine. I’ll see what happens tonight. Maybe if I add another step of doing something non essential it is enough time for the lookup to be populated and send properly.
That’s interesting. Yeah, maybe add in an irrelevant “find records” step that finds some records. Let us know what happens!
If Airtable needs some time in between linking a record and grabbing the lookup fields, this might be something for @dan to bring up on his podcast.
I recommend doing a “Find Records” to get the lookup value. The lookup field needs time to get a new value from the newly linked record. Then use the result from the “find records” action.
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Thanks Kuovonne,
that was my thinking too today.
Just tried it and had to troubleshoot another issue - as it turns out, you can’t use a number in a dynamic field for a condition, had to turn it into a string to make it work, but ok. That’s done now and I’m sure the whole thing will work as expected now 
just as an update… it all changed now. made a junction table pulling in all the necessary info. let that link populate automatically after midnight. and then a couple hours later in the early morning I trigger the email with all the info it definitely has by then.
thanks again both for you help
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