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Product board to slack feed not providing complete information despite delay

  • 8 December 2023
  • 3 replies
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My goal is to set up a zap integration between Productboard and slack, such that new notes added to product are posted into a dedicated Productboard-feed slack channel.

I first set up a zap that looks like this: 

  1. Trigger: new note in Productboard
  2. Post to a dedicated Productboard feed slack channel with the title, content, and link of the Productboard note

What I noticed, though, is that most of the posts to slack with this trigger were empty of content. No title, no content; only a link. I experimented with this a bit and noticed that if I immediately put information into the new note, it would be included in the slack message that was posted. If, however, I added some information, left the tab for a moment, and then came back and added more, only the initial information would be included.

My assumption is that when most people create a new note, they perhaps take a moment to gather information and fill out the note. And the ProductBoard notes autosave pretty quickly, which likely sets off the “new note in Productboard” trigger. So, while they’re gathering information, the Productboard note autosaves, likely leading to triggering the event, and leading to note information being added to slack while they’re still pretty empty.

I figured perhaps adding a delay would help. I attempted to correct this by adjusting the zap like so:

  1. Trigger: new note in Productboard
  2. Delay for ten minutes 
  3. Post to a dedicated Productboard feed slack channel with the title, content, and link of the Productboard note

Unfortunately, this didn’t fix the problem.

My assumption is that the following is happening:

  1. Someone starts a new note in product board. 
  2. The new note autosaves as soon as that person goes to another screen (perhaps to get the appropriate information to add to the note. 
  3. Ten minutes passes
  4. Instead of grabbing the current state of the product board note after those ten minutes have passed (which is what I want to happen), the zap grabs the initial (likely incomplete) note that was created initially, perhaps at the state it was in at its first autosave

Instead, I would like the zap to post the current state of the product board note after the delay has passed, as this is more likely to result in complete information being passed into the slack feed.

 

It is unclear to me whether this post is a “how do I” post or a feedback post. If it turns out there’s a way I can use different actions to get the desired outcome, then I’d love help with that! <3 If, on the other hand, there is no way to get a better outcome, then I’d like to pass along feedback that the delay behavior should be adjusted, specifically in cases that involve autosaved information that is likely to be incomplete on the first autosave. I would imagine that the outcome I’m looking for is what most people would want in this case.

 

Would love some help with this! <3

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Best answer by SamB 8 December 2023, 11:59

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Hello there @mollzmp, welcome to the Community! 🎉

Ah, I’ve seen this type of situation before with apps that autosave and send the Zap the information too soon! For situations like this adding a delay won’t solve it completely. As the delay can’t make the Zap automatically go back to Productboard and pull in the rest of the note’s text. You’d need to add a search action to find the note that triggered the Zap (added just after the delay action) so it can get the text that was added to the note during the delay period.

That said, I checked the actions that are currently available for the Productboard app and there’s no such “Find Note” action. We do have a feature request open to have that type of action added though. So I’ve gone ahead and added your vote to that since it’s what you’d be needing here. Can’t make any promises around when or if it will definitely be added but we’ll be sure to send you an email notification as soon as it is.

In the meantime, you could potentially use the Productboard’s API Request (Beta) action to make a request to the Productboard API and search for the note that way. It seems their Retrieve a note endpoint would be the one you’d need to make a GET request to. This type of action is a bit more advanced to set up but you can learn more about how to do that here: Set up an API Request action

Hope that helps to point you in the right direction. Do let us know if you run into any issues on setting that up, happy to help further! 🙂

Ok, I’ve added an API request to product board into the zap. I am not an admin, so I got help from someone who is to get the appropriate token.

 

I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything set up correctly. (When I put in the same information from the zap into this retrieve a note tester, it works great.) And yet, I get a response status of 401

 

I have a hunch I wanted to check on before troubleshooting more. ...Do you know if this issue arise because it’s my productboard account that is plugged into the zap, but a token that someone else (an admin) created?

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Thanks for the update here, @mollzmp! 🙂

Yes, that may well be the case here as the Zap is likely sending the connected Productboard account’s credentials as well. 

So you may need to move the request over to a separate Webhooks by Zapier action instead as that wouldn’t have your Productboard account connected it. Which would ensure the Zap only uses the token for the request. It’s a fairly similar process to setting up an API Request action but I’ll share the help guide we have for setting up webhook actions too, in case it’s useful: Send webhooks in Zaps

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with this!