Forum Discussion
MarkShnier__You
Qrew Legend
5 years agoCan you take a step back from the technical questions and explain the business process you are trying to do? There may be a way better way than Automations. Are you trying to have a process to routinely receive raw data via a manual import, transform and clean it up, and then push to your real data table?
------------------------------
Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.com
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------
------------------------------
Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.com
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------
DavidHalter2
5 years agoQrew Member
Thanks for the interest Mark. I can try!
We are looking at tracking activities that occur in a training program where there is also heirarchy. That is: staff / senior trainee / junior trainee. Sometimes staff trains two juniors. Sometimes a senior trains a junior with the help of the staff. Sometimes a senior does the activity with the help of the junior and no staff. And other combinations. Thus, you might have records:
Each person may have a slightly different role in the activity even when the Actor position is the same. Thus activity 1 the senior needed more help but in activity 3 the senior needed very little help and in activity 4 they were teaching while in activity 2 they were observing the staff. This data entry model makes a lot of sense when entering because that is how the activity proceeds and how it is already commonly recorded. IE, entering the data in the same way I want the eventual report is problematic because the people just don't think that way. My automations solved that problem to get a report of the trainees (not the activities). I end up wanting a list of activities for each person. So the list above needs to be reported like this:
The automations I have set up do this nicely based on rules which may or may not be obvious above, but the problem became today that I had it set up inappropriately and it passed the blanks for tertiary for activity 2. And it did it over and over and over (500+ records in my test database). So, that was a problem. What I really wanted was to fire the automation over and just get it reset. Probably one thing I could do is set up a time-based triggers and run an overnight automation basically run the same automations but getting it right could be tiresome if I mess it up a couple times and have to wait until every night to let it run to see if I set it up correctly. In the long-term, I'm thinking about what will happen if the reporting requirements change and then I've got a very useful set of database records with all the correct information but all the wrong answers, so to speak.
So, 2 questions remain, then. Is there a better way to get the desired result? Second, if not, is there a better way to get the automations to fire when I want them to particularly if I'm testing or else if the reporting requirements change, which they might.
Thanks
Dave
------------------------------
Dave Halter
------------------------------
We are looking at tracking activities that occur in a training program where there is also heirarchy. That is: staff / senior trainee / junior trainee. Sometimes staff trains two juniors. Sometimes a senior trains a junior with the help of the staff. Sometimes a senior does the activity with the help of the junior and no staff. And other combinations. Thus, you might have records:
Primary actor | Secondary Actor | Tertiary Actor | Grade | Activity details (date, label, etc. multiple col) |
senior | staff | junior | 2 | activty 1 |
staff | senior | 1 | activity 2 | |
senior | junior | staff | 4 | activity 3 |
junior | senior | staff | 3 | activty 4 |
Each person may have a slightly different role in the activity even when the Actor position is the same. Thus activity 1 the senior needed more help but in activity 3 the senior needed very little help and in activity 4 they were teaching while in activity 2 they were observing the staff. This data entry model makes a lot of sense when entering because that is how the activity proceeds and how it is already commonly recorded. IE, entering the data in the same way I want the eventual report is problematic because the people just don't think that way. My automations solved that problem to get a report of the trainees (not the activities). I end up wanting a list of activities for each person. So the list above needs to be reported like this:
activity | person | job | category in words | grade (may or may not be same as reported grade) |
activity 1 | senior | primary | needs lots of help | 2 |
activity 2 | senior | secondary | observing | 1 |
activity 3 | senior | primary | needed very little help | 4 |
activity 4 | senior | secondary | taught the junior | 4 |
activity 1 | staff | secondary | teacher | 6 |
activty 2 | staff | primary | teacher | 6 |
activity 3 | staff | secondary | teacher | 6 |
activity 4 | staff | tertiary | teacher | 6 |
activity 1 | junior | tertiary | observing | 1 |
activity 3 | junior | secondary | observing | 1 |
activity 4 | junior | primary | needed very little help | 3 |
The automations I have set up do this nicely based on rules which may or may not be obvious above, but the problem became today that I had it set up inappropriately and it passed the blanks for tertiary for activity 2. And it did it over and over and over (500+ records in my test database). So, that was a problem. What I really wanted was to fire the automation over and just get it reset. Probably one thing I could do is set up a time-based triggers and run an overnight automation basically run the same automations but getting it right could be tiresome if I mess it up a couple times and have to wait until every night to let it run to see if I set it up correctly. In the long-term, I'm thinking about what will happen if the reporting requirements change and then I've got a very useful set of database records with all the correct information but all the wrong answers, so to speak.
So, 2 questions remain, then. Is there a better way to get the desired result? Second, if not, is there a better way to get the automations to fire when I want them to particularly if I'm testing or else if the reporting requirements change, which they might.
Thanks
Dave
------------------------------
Dave Halter
------------------------------
- MarkShnier__You5 years ago
Qrew Legend
Unfortunately, there's not a way to convert a scheduled automation into an automation that can be run on the trigger.
But if you were willing to rebuild your automation, you can make the automation which triggers on the change of a control record somewhere. This could be a single record in a single table that exist on it for the purpose of triggering the automation. So you can trigger manually anytime you like.
Then you set up a scheduled automation whose only job is to update a date time field on that control record to be the current date and time and that would then trigger the overnight automation.
------------------------------
Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.com
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------