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Question

Airtable's 'Find Records' Not Supporting Multiple Line Items

  • 13 March 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 70 views
thetcadvantage

My clients fill out a Cognito form that has a section for customer contact info. That information is submitted to Zapier as line items. 

 

When I use the Create Records (with Line Item Support), everything works as it should. I have a separate record for each contact with the correct contact info for each. 

 

In some cases I would like to check Airtable to see if one or more of the contacts are already entered and if not, create those records. HOWEVER, when I use the Find Records (with Line Item Support) it seems to be searching for the records as a string, and not as individual records. And since it can’t find any record matching that string, it tries to create a new record, but now only creates 1 record with the information for all contacts merged. 

 

I hope I explained that carefully. I can’t figure out if my issue is with Cognito, Zapier or Airtable. HELP!

This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

5 replies

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @thetcadvantage 

Good question.

Please post detailed screenshots with how your Zap steps are configured in order for us to have more context.

Make sure to outline a specific example for us as well.

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
thetcadvantage

Thanks @Troy Tessalone I’ll do my best. 

 

Here is an outline of my Zap steps:

 

Step 7 is Find Many Records with Line Item Support & create record if none found. 

 

My example is Samuel Seller & Sandra Seller. In Step 7 I ask the system to look into Airtable and search for Samuel & Sandra’s email addresses. If they aren’t found, create a record for Samuel and a record for Sandra.

The email addresses from Cognito come over in a string:

sammyseller@emailtest.com, sandyseller@emailtest.com

 

I check the box to create a record if none is found, but instead of 2 records, I only get 1 record with the information combined:

 

 

 

However, if I just use the Create Records (with Line Items Support) and enter in the exact same information into the exact same fields, I’ll get 2 separate records. 

 

 

Let me know if you need any additional details. 

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@thetcadvantage 

Try using the Looping app in the Zap to iterate thru 1+ line items separately.

 

###

 

The Search Value field can’t handle line items, and the else create new record doesn’t handle multiple line items.

 

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
thetcadvantage

@Troy Tessalone 

 

Ahhhh I understand. So, the “line item support” is referring to the results of the search. If I wanted to find all records for contacts labeled “Seller”, then it would give me those results in a string. 

 

I’ll try to mess with Looping and see if that works. 

 

Thank you! 

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @thetcadvantage! 

I just wanted to hop in here to confirm that the Find Many Records (With Line Item Support) search action would output the multiple search results as line items, not as strings. As Troy suggested, you can use Looping by Zapier with a Find Record (Airtable) action that would let you search for each email address individually and create a record for the contact if an existing one isn’t found.

Also, I wanted to share a link to our Loop your Zap actions guide in case it’s helpful to you in getting that set up. Eager to ensure you’re all set here so please do keep us updated on how you get on with this! 🙂

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