Question

Looping: How to create subsequent recurrences in a series only

  • 14 November 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 42 views

We are using Looping to create calendar events that are a monthly virtual series - that part works fine. When people register, there’s another Zap that creates the entire series (via looping) and writing back all the series dates to a multi-instance panel in our AMS for participants’ easy access to the meeting URL for each recurrence - this is great for registrations before the entire series begins, but people may register to join the recurring event at any point in the series. 

My question:  How can I make sure that only “future” events in the series get created (and not the entire loop)?

Example:  the original event has the code:  ANA22

The subsequent events in the series become: ANA222, ANA223, ANA224, ANA225 (etc.)

If someone registers for ANA223, how can only the subsequent events (ANA224, ANA225, etc) in the loop be created?  Having the loop run the entire series with past events is a waste of valuable zaps!


3 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @AWSNAweb!

One way to approach this (depending how many events you have) would be to use a lookup table to determine the values you need to loop through.

In the following example, I’m using the Lookup Table feature built into our Formatter app. You could also use something like Google Sheets or Airtable if you wanted to give others access to updating it/being able to see everything.

The general idea is that based on the value that comes through, I output the subsequent values that I want to loop through:

 

You could have others, if you have several fields you need:

 

If it’s at all complex, and to save Zap steps, I’d probably recommend Airtable since you can do something like this:

 

This way you perform one search and you get all of the fields you need for here:

 

Hope that makes sense! Please let us know if you have any other questions :)

Thank you so much!!!

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @AWSNAweb!

Have you had a chance to try out Nick’s solution? If it worked it would be super helpful if you could mark it as a best answer as it helps other user find answers to similar problems quicker. Thanks and happy Zapping!

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