How to choose a random Zapier table record and get the record by ID

  • 10 February 2024
  • 1 reply
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Userlevel 1

I noticed that Zapier Tables doesn’t have an option for getting a table record by ID. This was throwing a wrench in my plans for my use-case. 

Use-case: Have a dynamic segment of an email that constantly rotates between different blog posts to recommend to readers, without having to update it manually. 

I created a table with my list of blog posts, with their name and link. 

To get a random record from the table, I use a search to return all the records as line items, then use a formatter step to pick a random line item. I pick the record ID in order to be able to get the entire record. 

Then, to get the record, I use the “update record” step which requires an ID. I don’t fill out any of the fields to update. They don’t overwrite data when they’re empty, so all it does is return the entire record. 

I then update an RSS feed with only 1 item with the info from the record. 

Here’s a quick video overview of the workaround: 

 


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1 reply

Userlevel 7
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WOW! That is such a clever workaround @GiovanniSegar! 👏👏👏

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this in the Community. I know it’ll be super helpful to a lot of folks here. 🤗

I couldn’t see any existing feature requests open for the ability to search for table records by ID so I’d suggest reaching out to the support team here to submit that idea. They’ll be able to add it as a new feature request so we can start tracking user interest in that. 

Thanks again for sharing this workaround here, it’s much appreciated! 🎉