Question

Changing Text or Send Time After Adding Spreadsheet Row

  • 16 April 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 29 views

Userlevel 1

This post was split from the topic: 

 

Hi @ken.a,

Hope you’re well. Just had a follow up question about the above which I was wondering if you could help me with?

I have a Zap set up which takes a “new spreadsheet row” trigger in Google Sheets and sends a message in a Slack channel at a predetermined time (the message text and time to send the message are fields in the Google Sheet). 

The automation works fine, however it doesn’t give me any room for error i.e. I can’t change the message text or send time after adding the spreadsheet row. 

Do you know if I can set up this Zap so it gives me some flexibility to change the text or send time after adding the spreadsheet row? 

Hope that makes sense, let me know if you need any further info.

Cheers

 


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3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hey there @Waario,

I wouldn’t anticipate this being a problem! You can try using our Delay feature to achieve this workflow. Here’s a Community post talking more about the Delay feature:

Also, here’s our help article about the Delay feature as well: https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496288754829

Hopefully, this helps! 😊

Userlevel 1

Hi @ken.a,

Many thanks for the reply, I really appreciate you reaching out. I’ve tried this approach and unfortunately I have the same issue. 

I think the problem is that the row in “new spreadsheet row” trigger contains the copy that gets sent via Slack. So even if add a “delay by zapier” action, the original copy has already been sent in the zap so editing the copy in the spreadsheet doesn’t have the desired effect (unless I’m doing it wrong). 

If there is any other workaround you can think of that would be much appreciated. 

Cheers, 

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Waario,

There are 2 parts to this, but the one that really matters is that once the Zap has scheduled that Slack message to be sent, there’s no way to update it. Even if you were to use the New or Updated Row trigger to run the Zap when you make edits.

I think you could look into some sort of IF formula that recognizes when “now” is equal to the date/time you set and then updates the cell value, which you could have trigger the Zap using New or Updated Row. I haven’t tested this...just trying to think of some workarounds.

 

Otherwise, something like Airtable would be more flexible. You could actually create a view that shows a record when your designated date and time arrives, then that triggers the Zap. 

I realize that’s a whole different app and if you’re not familiar there’s definitely a learning curve.