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: