The Airtable upgrade to expiring links has broken some of my processes.
I’m storing documents (*.pdf, docx…) in an attachment field, used a formal to extract the download links and Make automation to download those and attach them to emails.
Is there a workaround to make Airtable attachments work or due I need to change to a different system? What comes first to my mind is to roll up records from a separate “attachments”-table with links to external cloud storage.
None of your processes will need to change, but you simply won’t be able to use the formula field for your attachment extraction.
In Make.com, just point to the URL from the attachment field itself, download the file from that URL, and then attach that file to your email.
The URL will only be valid for 2 hours, but that won’t make a difference because it will only take a few seconds to download & attach the file. After 2 hours, if you try to grab a URL from that very same attachment field again, it will be a new URL, but that will be totally fine because you’re just downloading & attaching it again.
Thanks @ScottWorld, I didn’t realize there was an URL field included and always thought extracting the URL via a formula is mandatory. An easier solution that expected.
Btw if you are looking for a more scalable solution for storing your assets and getting a non-expiring URLs to use ub your apps, you can use Firebase/Google Cloud storage. and to get a nocode/airtable like experience of using Google Cloud Storage you can use Rowy.io. Here is a video on this: Move Airtable Attachments to Google Cloud Storage for non-expiring URLs - YouTube
I am co-founder of Rowy, we made Rowy for solving these kinds of issues when nocode development reaches certain limits of features or scale. Happy to answer any questions if you find this interesting/useful.
I haven’t used Rowy much, but I’ve developed an interesting viewpoint about it. I believe Rowy, and other tools like it, define what’s next. And by “next”, I mean when the no/low-code database product segment must undergo a transformation to meet new demands related to artificial general intelligence.
I don’t think the founders and CEOs of the current crop of market-leading no/low-code platforms are ready for what happens after AI reaches the knee of the curve.
We’ve been talking about AI for a few decades now, and quietly, largely undetectable progress has continued. Nothing really big, nothing really impressive. Last year, we hit the"knee" of the curve. (Chain of Thought)
I have a hunch that Rowy is “AGI-ready”. This is to say that it has an underlying design that would support the ability to build applications based purely on instructions abstracted from an AI process. Am I wrong or premature about my hunch?
I recently wrote …
No-code front-ends and back-ends will flourish in the coming years. It will become a race of specialists. No-code solutions will transition into best-of-breed components beginning with the fundamental decision point - Which front-end and back-end do I choose for this project?
BTW, last week I literally wrote a task for myself -
“Try to get in touch with the CEO of Rowy and ask her if she envisions a time when her platform will be able to respond to an AI prompt that describes a database system, and just build it.”
hey Ricardo, can you please detail how you’ve setup this Make automation to download the attachments and attach to emails?
I have a similar table with attachment fields, and when I “send record” directly from Airtable, the image resolution decreases and are pixelated upon zooming. The file names are also randomized. So I am looking for a solution that keeps the original attachment size intact, including the file names preferably
Hey Ricardo, thanks for the explanation. I am new to Make and trying to recreate this setup, but running into a few problems. Can you please help clarify:
In my setup, each of the 2 rows of automation is processing only 1 attachment at a time. Is that the way it’s supposed to be?
Every time I run this automation, 2 mails get sent with 1 attachment each. How do I combine into a single mail i.e. I am not able to figure out how the array aggregator works I guess
I can post individual screenshots of the individual module configurations if that helps!
Hey @ScottWorld I’m trying to send an attachment from Airtable to QuickBooks using the HTTP Get File module. I’m pointing to the file URL field and can tell the HTTP module is getting the file, but the attachment will not go to QuickBooks for some reason. I also tried uploading the attachment to Google Drive, getting a share link, doing another HTTP Get File module, and sending that url to QuickBooks, but that didn’t work either. The attachment did successfully upload to Google Drive, but for whatever reason it will not send to QuickBooks. And it’s weird because I have successfully sent attachments to QuickBooks for a while now by sending the attachment url from my Glide app. I think Glide creates their own urls for attachments that are syncing from Airtable ever since Airtable made the change in their url behavior.
Thanks for the info. I’ll probably never be able to figure out the API module but I’ll try. But why do you think the url works when coming from Glide but not when coming from Airtable? From other posts of yours that I’ve seen, you seem to have no problem pointing to the Attachment URL in Airtable to use in other Make modules right?
Yes, but Make’s QuickBooks modules don’t natively support sending attachments to QuickBooks, so you would have to manually craft your own API call using their “QuickBooks Make an API Call” module.
It sounds like Glide has built in native support for sending attachments to QuickBooks.
You may want to ask Make support for advice on how to craft your API call using their “QuickBooks Make An API Call” module.
I just got it to work! I used Google Drive “Upload a File” then “Download a File” then HTTP “Get a File” then QuickBooks and then delete the file from Google Drive. There’s obviously something about the Airtable link that QuickBooks doesn’t like
