Forum Discussion

MarkShnier__You's avatar
MarkShnier__You
Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
5 years ago
OK, I finally understand the question.

The references to APIs are a red herring.This kind of APIs are used for a user to click to cause an edit.  Nothing to do with your use case.

Also, there is in fact a user causing a record to be edited to trigger a process, so these summary fields are not in fact changing due to the passage of time.  They are changing because a User approved a record and hence edited a record.

So we do in fact have a clear trigger event.  The event is an Approval Level 1 record being approved.

Notifications to the Approval Level 2 recipients can be done using an Automation.

We need to have a summary field of the [# of Level 2 Approvers already notified]. That will be the summary count of the # of Level 2 approvals where the [Level 2 Approver date/time Notified] is still blank.  This date/time field is the one that will be updated by the Automation to trigger the Notification. 

Let's make sure that we have a formula date/time field called [Current Date/time] with a formula of Now()  on the Approval records.  Also we will need to have the lookup of that parent field for [Ready to Notify Level 2 Approvers].

The Automation will Trigger when a Level 1 Approval is done, subject to the filter that [Ready to Notify Level 2 Approvers] is checked  and [# of Level 2 Approvers already notified] =0.   Presumably,  this would then trigger when the last of the approval level one approvals was done. 

The Action once triggered will be to Modify Records in the Approvals table , subject to the filter that they have the same [Related Proposal] as the trigger record.

I believe that the modify records action will be done slow enough that it will be seen as a single record notification update for Notifications. If you get this working but the Notification only fires a multi record change notification which would not be suitable for your needs, let me know and we will just daisy chain one automation to call the next and that will slow it down enough to make individual record change notifications.   

 


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Mark Shnier (YQC)
Quick Base Solution Provider
Your Quick Base Coach
http://QuickBaseCoach.com
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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PaulStreit's avatar
PaulStreit
Qrew Member
5 years ago
Good point regarding the approval response as a trigger. This may work. I’ll mess with it and report back. Might be a few days.

Thanks
Paul

  • PaulStreit's avatar
    PaulStreit
    Qrew Member
    5 years ago
    OK, I'm almost there. I set things up but in the very last step, the automation that sets the trigger checkbox that in turn triggers the email notifications has an issue. The automation is setting the checkbox correctly, but the email notification doesn't trigger off of it. If I manually set the checkbox the email notification triggers. So it appears that when an automation updates a field in a record this is not the same as manually placing the record in edit mode, setting the checkbox, and then saving it.

    Any suggestions on what to do here?

    Thank you,
    Paul


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    Paul Streit
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  • MarkShnier__You's avatar
    MarkShnier__You
    Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
    5 years ago
    It could  be this issue here.

    I believe that the modify records action will be done slow enough that it will be seen as a single record notification update for Notifications. If you get this working but the Notification only fires a multi record change notification which would not be suitable for your needs, let me know and we will just daisy chain one automation to call the next and that will slow it down enough to make individual record change notifications.   


    I suggest that you enable the multi record notification feature of the Notification configuration and set it to come to you.  If it comes to you it means that the Notification is firing, but the updates are so fast that Quick Base considers them to be a multi record notification type.

    If that is the case, then we need to slow them down so we daisy chain. Create a new field called [Date/Time to Actually trigger Notification].  Rename the old field to be called  [Date/Time to Request Notification].

    Make a new Automation fire when the [Date/Time to Request Notification] changes to change the field [Date/Time to Actually Trigger Notification] to the current date/time.

    Change the Notification to fire on this field [Date/Time to Actually Trigger Notification]

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    Mark Shnier (YQC)
    Quick Base Solution Provider
    Your Quick Base Coach
    http://QuickBaseCoach.com
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
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  • PaulStreit's avatar
    PaulStreit
    Qrew Member
    5 years ago

    Mark,

     

    You were right, I verified that QB is considering them to be a multi-notification type. I'll try your solution and report back. I didn't see this before because the notifications were set for single notification only, so nothing was going out even though triggering was occurring.

     

    Back soon,

    Paul



  • PaulStreit's avatar
    PaulStreit
    Qrew Member
    5 years ago
    Mark,

    The daisy chain automations triggered, and the "request" and "actually" checkboxes are checked, but the email notifications are still being considered by QB as multi-notifications. I even added another step in the daisy chain with a second "request" checkbox between the first "request" checkbox and the "actually" checkbox, including of course the additional automation to set it the additional checkbox, and still the same issue occurs. I'm not getting any automation errors. The sole problem is that QB is considering the record updates as a multi-notification instead of single.

    I'm wondering if a pipeline would fix this, to search for the records that need to be triggered, then step through the search results recordset one record at a time to set a trigger checkbox that would trigger the notifications. Thoughts?

    Thanks
    Paul

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    Paul Streit
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