Forum Discussion

AlinMihalcea1's avatar
AlinMihalcea1
Qrew Assistant Captain
8 years ago

Push a button every 30 minutes

Basically I am looking for a way to write the current date and time on all record contained in a report every 30 minutes.
I know this cannot be done natively, but maybe there is a way for me to employ some external application that could help with this? I know there is a google application that could open a page on a schedule (CronTab). Maybe there's something out there that would also interact with that page?
  • Interesting question. Can you explain the business problem you are trying to solve?
  • AlinMihalcea1's avatar
    AlinMihalcea1
    Qrew Assistant Captain
    Hi Mark,
    I'm looking to send notifications based on the current time. So I would have two fields, one would be the current date/time, that I'm looking to update every 30 minutes, and the second would be task due date/time. Then I would be able to calculate the difference between the two and send the notification if the task due date/time is within 30 minutes from the current date/time.
  • One thought that i have had but never implemented is to create a sync table of your main table to a mirror table. That could include a date / time formula field with a formula of Now().

    Then that would be set to update every hour,  and you would then trigger a notification when that date time field changed in the sync table  and other conditions were true like you described above

    So its not 30 minutes, it is 60 minutes, but it keeps you to a native solution with no 3rd party add ons or Chron jobs which could break.
  • AlinMihalcea1's avatar
    AlinMihalcea1
    Qrew Assistant Captain
    So would the Now() formula update each time I did the import?
    Would I create the mirror table by adding the records in there via a webhook or action from the main table? In other words, each time I add a new record in the main table the action would add the same record in the main table. then every hour I would have the main table sync with the mirror table for the purpose of updating the Now() field?
  • You would create a new table and specify it to be a connected table.  It will then guide you though the process to select a source (QuickBase) and then which app and which table.  You will then decide which fields to bring across in the sync.  The fields will come across as non formula fields so yes, when the Sync updates each hour the current value for Now() will be updated in the Sync table.

     It will also capture any new records in the main table and update any existing records.
  • AlinMihalcea1's avatar
    AlinMihalcea1
    Qrew Assistant Captain
    That could work...
    I'll give that a try and report back
    Thanks Mark!