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VALUE OF ONE FIELD IS ALWAYS EQUAL TO VALUE OF ANOTHER IN SAME TABLE

  • February 20, 2019
  • 0 replies
  • 143 views
I have an automation that is dependent on a record being modified.  My problem is the trigger field (it is a date formula field), when changed, doesn't update the "date modified" field.  I created a new field (type=date) that I need to be always equal to the value in the current trigger field.  This field does update the modified date which would trigger the automation.  Any help is appreciated! 
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    • DanieGrabe
    • Registered
    • February 22, 2019
    Hi Alecia, it makes sense that the formula would not change - only the result of the formula. If you make another field equal to this one, it will also be a formula - so same problem. Can you give us more information about your business case/ challenge? I am not 100% sure that I understand your question.
    • EricMohlman
    • Quickbase Staff
    • March 4, 2019
    There are three types of fields, formula, summary, and lookup that are "derived" at the moment they're used in a form, report, notification, etc. and therefore don't change values. Since your formula date field is based on some other information on the record however, would triggering your automation on its source data changing work for your situation instead?
    • AleciaGipson1
    • Author
    • Registered
    • March 5, 2019
    So the challenge I am facing is we have several tables that house different information about each employee.  Then all of those records come together in the "personnel" table that serves as an employee record and shows all information from different tables in one place.  Example:  John Smith has a record in personnel.  He has one event in the "citations" table, one event in "collision" table, etc..  All of those are displayed on the record form for "John Smith" in the personnel table.  We have a monitoring process built based on all of those summary fields from the different table (this was built prior to my coming on board).  In order to prevent the need to rebuild everything for time being I just need to "trigger" a training session (in training table) when criteria is met in the summary fields.  The only automation functions I can find are when a record is modified or added.  Since the personnel table record is basically a summary record I just need to figure out how to trigger that automation to trigger.  I tried setting an automation to update the current date field on a scheduled daily basis but there are too many records and it errors out.  Sorry for the novel it is just a complicated and inefficient build and I don't have the time to rebuild the entire thing right now. 
    • AleciaGipson1
    • Author
    • Registered
    • March 7, 2019
    After more testing I did find a solution.  Quickbase has a 25MB limit on automations (ugh..).  However I was able to create a date field and then set an automation to run daily to simply update the date to "today" based on records meeting the filter criteria (based on my summary fields).  This "modifies" the records and then triggers all the automations connected to run.  It isn't pretty but it works for now. 
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