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Delay Until Other Zaps process a specific record


Hey all, 


I’ve built out invoicing in Airtable and I use Zapier for some of the more complex automations. For our invoicing, the recipient can take one of three actions (i.e. trigger 1+ zaps) on a given Airtable record. The actions result in an updated invoice which is automatically emailed to them.


We don’t expect the recipient to take these actions at the speed of light, but we wanted to test these actions as if we were in a hurry and to see if Airtable and Zapier would ‘keep up.’ They didn’t - usually it catches one or more of the changes but not all of them, and the last invoice received by the customer is incorrect. 
 

IS IT POSSIBLE to delay a zap if other zaps are processing the same record? What are suggestions to navigate around this? THANK YOU!

 

 

Best answer by Troy Tessalone

Hi @Lander Admin 

Try using a shared queue.

Zap action: Delay - After Queue

https://zapier.com/apps/delay/help

 

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4 replies

Troy Tessalone
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  • Zapier Expert
  • 30739 replies
  • Answer
  • June 16, 2024

Hi @Lander Admin 

Try using a shared queue.

Zap action: Delay - After Queue

https://zapier.com/apps/delay/help

 


Troy Tessalone
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@Lander Admin

Another approach is like this:

  • Trigger: ???
  • Action: Delay - For
    • Used to give other Zaps time to finish processing
  • Action: Airtable - Find Record
    • Used to get the most current data for the Airtable Record
  • Action: ???

Thanks @Troy Tessalone I appreciate this; Delay after Queue looks promising.
Looking at this help article It appears you can create a queue in each of our three zaps with the same name. Bare with me, I am trying to place this in my head.

So if the name of the delay after queue is the Airtable record ID, then each zap run across multiple zaps would wait until the prior zap run with this record ID is complete?

 

Thanks!


Troy Tessalone
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@Lander Admin 

Works like FIFO (first in, first out).

Say the queue name is XXX with a delay of 1 minute between.

e.g. Zap Run A, wait 1 minute, Zap Run B, wait 1 minute, Zap Run C