Can't use conditionals to update data on Airtable

I’m scraping information from a real estate website every week on monday. And I want to add the new houses to a airtable. So everything runs great but now he add all the houses, also the ones I already added. So I setup an action that he gets data from the airtable. In the conditional step I defined that the streaat name can not be the same as the street name in airtable. If that is not the case he add the record to airtable. But somehow he get an error on the conditional step. When I don’t use dynamic fields from the get airtable action but just a static word it works. But with the conditional input it gets an error.

Hi Jordy, welcome to the community!

Seems like you’re struggling to update your airtable data.

A solution we’ve created for these cases is the “Update records in airtable” command, so only new rows are created.

You can use this instead of conditionals.

It works the same as the GSheet one

Hi Ivan, thank you for your answer. It’s not exactly what I’m trying to accomplish. I want to check if the record already exists in my airtable. Because I scrape the website immoweb every week. But I only want to add new houses to the airtbale. So for that I want to check if the adress already exist in my airttable. The adress is in the column straat + nr column in airtable. When the adress does not already exist then a new record can be created otherwise it need to skip this step.

Yeah exactly that’s what the update or add does.

It checks if there’s already an existing house and it doesn’t create a duplicate, rather just updates that record.

If the house is not on the list it’ll create a new record.

Don’t understand what’s different :thinking:

Maybe you can share your automation link so we can check?

I’ve been having similar issues with my own automation. Conditional step isn’t working.

Hey Ivan,

I also have an issue with the update airtable automation.

As you’ve mentioned, conditionals may not be the best way.

I presume the “update” automation is a standalone process in the builder?

My use case:

If column C features an article, I would like column A and B to to generate a headline and a meta description respectively. Based on the article/content in column C.

I’ve created a blank builder document and started the process with “update records in airtable” block.

“To airtable table:” No issue can select correct table.

“Search rows by column:” copied and pasted the excact column heading. This forms a “bubble” but it was not selected from a dropdown. Purely text input.

“Find rows by value:” This is my stumbling block. I’d like to update all empty cells in column A based on content in column C. (i need to run column B as a separate process?)

  • should I be using text or commands?
  • Is there a standard string for looking up empty cells?
  • Should i be running the chatGPT element within this block or as a second, linked process?

Clearly, I’m a newbie :sweat_smile: Maybe I’m mising the obvious.

Your thoughts here would greatly appreciated.

1 Like

@reaganroo22

Thanks for sharing this!

I’m trying to understand what we’re missing on your case, can you help me understand how the “update or add” doesn’t help here?

Can you share maybe the use-case and automation? Or a quick loom walkthough?

Hi @Figmentr checking your case!

I don’t understand how you’ll be able to do this:

Is it with scraping?

Can you share an article link example maybe? Or a walkthough of your process.

My guess on what’s missing:

Seeing as you want to update if colum C features an Article, the “find rows by value” should contain the links from the articles.

This will look up on the column C for the article links. If the links are the matched, it should update the rows, in this case, with the description and title. If the links are not found, it’ll create new rows.

Seeing your screenshot, theres 3 fixes you can do:

  1. Add a “find Airtable rows” or “get airtable rows”.

This is needed for update or add so Bardeen can update the existing rows.

  1. To do this, in “update or add”, on “values to find”, relate it to the previous step to get airtable rows.

  2. On “update rows with data” create the column instead of mapping those 2 custom prompts.

I can help draft it for you if you share the automation link please :pray:

I see how this action is not that intuitive, I’m happy to help.

Ivan, I am having similar problems and cannot find information on what I am supposed to put in “search rows by column” and “find rows by value”. My playbook completes an online form then the result of the form submission needs to go to airtable.


Here is the automation link: Shared Playbook Template

@ivan could you please assist as I need to get this working during the Bardeen trial otherwise my client won’t use Bardeen ongoing

Hi Lucy, great to have a support ticket.

How can I get this autobook working?!

Lauren

Hi Lauren,

Thanks so much for shining light on the following issue. We believe this is a bug with Bardeen’s current integration with AirTable and are working on resolving it as needed. I have escalated the following issue to our engineering team and I’ll be sure to provide you with an update once any progress is made. Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Omansh

Customer Support - bardeen.ai
Explore | @bardeenai | Bardeen Community

Do you have an idea of timeframe? Can you suspend my free trial days remaining until this is resolved?

Hi Lauren,

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. I’ve extended your trial period for an additional 21 days while we wait to get this issue resolved.

Cheers,
Lucy

Customer Support - bardeen.ai
Explore | @bardeenai | Bardeen Community

Hey Lucy!

Wondering how its going?

As a work around - given you have access to what ive been creating - could someone on your team help me get a Google sheets versions operating within 48 hours?

We can move to airtable after, as we need to, and your software is what ive decided upon.

I need to show my client the bardeen parts work, which we could do with Sheets from my understanding?

Id really appreciate if your team could let me know any errors in the bardeen part thats central. It gave me the tick it worked, but I dont have evidence it works yet.

Thank you so much, and I gotta say, im loving a tech company that has humans to talk to!

Lauren

Hi Lauren,

Absolutely! Can you please share the Google Sheet with edits access to lucy@bardeen.ai and we can get that set up for you?

Thanks,
Lucy

Customer Support - bardeen.ai
Explore | @bardeenai | Bardeen Community

Thank you again!

I’ve had terrible trouble trying to format the google sheet with array and scripts to get the date and address fields to match the input required for the website form that needs to be submitted by Bardeen. This is where Airtable was set up with formulas etc.

Here’s the new google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3RZAgbzd8ozUalBl8uk68141xBg99Plg6znOtLR21A/edit?usp=sharing

Here is the new google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaW8LABAfn5bF2CbfATMq96FLbmfAPWikNg6QkFsmpz7saeQ/formResponse

Here is the new google sheets Bardeen link: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaW8LABAfn5bF2CbfATMq96FLbmfAPWikNg6QkFsmpz7saeQ/formResponse

Here is the original Airtable table: https://airtable.com/appS5IM9BY704Z7s9/shrD8cn6ksHP5wS09

I’ve attached a screenshot of the place where i get stuck in bardeen, i cannot find the meaning of search rows and search columns so i’m purely guessing which ones to select with understanding why the selects are chosen.

The second screenshot , when i match the fields, claims it’s a different input type to what was expected and Bardeen will attempt to match them but it’s different and might error.

Screen Shot 2024-04-18 at 8.45.53 am.png
Screen Shot 2024-04-18 at 8.44.31 am.png

Hi Lauren,

Thanks so much for providing all of this context so that we can effectively troubleshoot your issue. The two commands which you are confused about “Search rows by column” and “Find rows by value” are what Bardeen uses to detect the specific row to update. It iterates over the “Search rows by column” and checks whenever the value is equal to “Find rows by value”.

In the “Search rows by column” parameter, you simply want to put in the name of the column which you would like to iterate over to find the update row. You can do this by selecting the options which would appear similar to the ones below.

Then, once you’ve done the following, choose the specific value which you’d like to check against in the “Find rows by value” parameter. Additionally, the reason Bardeen says it expected a different input type is when the type of the column doesn’t match the type of the value you are trying to add into it. For example, if you try to add a boolean value into a column of text. However, in most cases, Bardeen should just convert the value into text or any other type automatically and insert it into the google sheet. I hope this information helps and please let me know if you’re facing any further issues in implementing the playbook!

Cheers,
Omansh

Customer Support - bardeen.ai
Explore | @bardeenai | Bardeen Community

But which is the row to search column, do you mean record ID that is unique. Sheets just has the form data, airtable has record ID. Theres nothing unique in a sheets row to make it identifiable or different.

What is the value for find by rows?

Im randomly selecting any one of them as I cannot identify a pattern or system as to how it works.

Is Airtable any closer to getting fixed? Even if I build in Sheets as a workaround ill have to rebuild them all for Airtable anyway. That halves my rate of pay for the work as doing it twice over for the same contract fee. There’s dozens and dozens of workflows to automate with hundreds of transactions a day for each.

Lucy mentioned you could set this one up, as then I can create the suite of other ones my client needs which will be somewhat similar.

Converting the value makes sense now, thanks for that!