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Question

Passing current user through an action

  • September 15, 2017
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I have a formula user field that is a simple User() to determine who is currently signed in. I have an action that is triggered and I want this value to be passed through the action. The issue is the user being passed is always my user. Is this because I am the owner of the action?

Yes, that is the issue.  Quick Base Engineers are wrestling with what do do about this issue, but more specially the [Record owner] or the [Last Modified by] when a record is added / edited by an Action.  Many users feel that the Record Owner should be the user who triggered the Action and not the Action owner.

A solution is to capture the [Last Modified by] of the original record which triggered the action and then you have your "current user" there. 

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  • September 15, 2017
Ahh okay, that makes sense, just wanted make sure I wasn't making a simple mistake. I'll make a field that looks at the last modified by and pass it through the action. Thanks!

Mark:

A huge thank you for your clever work-around here using the [Last Modified By] user value on the original record that triggered the action! I just got off the phone with Dan G at QuickBase support. The issue here is that currently (Dec 7, 2017) the User() function is not supported in webhooks and actions. They don't have an ETA on when they are going to fix this, but there are now two cases (including mine today) that are logged and attached to their developer queue request to fix this.

Dan had mentioned that there were no known work-arounds until I googled and found this forum question and then pointed out to him that you offered what looked to me to be a great work-around. I just tested your approach, and it works like a charm. It won't help with the fact that the [Record Owner] and the [Last Modified By] of the record that gets added by the Action are still going to be wrong and always listed as me, the creator of the Action, but my Action will now fill in the current user correctly for the Timesheet records that I'm creating on the fly in a 1-step process when the Activity records are updated by the user. Thanks again.

Michael