Launched: File Uploads & Attachments

Hi @Tim_Sherrod,

I’m glad you’re digging into the attachments feature. From your posts though, I’d like to mention some thoughts on using it. We’re not designing this around being an image or document repository in general. Design and function decisions are based around how to use attachments within Coda. An example would be uploading receipts to a table for taxes to have everything in one place verses a storage archive for all photos you take. I wouldn’t think of attachments as archival storage and I think you’ll find that the other systems you’re mentioning will have a few additional features that will be better suited for this.

If the goal it to have files in a place where you can add custom attributes and make notes on them, then Coda is a great solution.

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Thanks for the reply @BenLee. This is actually my exact goal though. The only reason I am wanting to use the Coda attachment feature is for the custom attributes, as well as making use of Coda forms.

For instance, one application is for our expenses. As a company, we have several hundred expenses every month. I have our bookkeepers process those expenses in Coda because I can use lookups and custom filters to ensure things properly get coded. I also use it to keep them out of our primary accounting software.

To do that, people were adding files to a Dropbox folder. We then synced that Dropbox folder through a pack on Coda. After all the attributes had been added, a button would be enabled that allowed them to process. It would process by sending the information to Zapier and from there Zapier would upload all the necessary information to our accounting software and it would then rename the original Dropbox file with attributes from Coda and move the file to a different folder. That way, any files that were in the synced Dropbox folder pack would still be pending processing.

Processed files would go from looking something like…2021-01-18%2010.40.52.pdf…to something like…2021_01_01_Walmart_67345_ID4354.pdf by using Coda’s concatenate and format formulas as well as Row ID. This updated file name made it a lot easier to browse past or archived expenses in Dropbox and to quickly navigate to the original file when reviewing an expense in our accounting software.

After Coda forms were released, I created an expense form that our employees could add expenses to instead of adding them to a Dropbox folder. With the form, I could have them fill some of the initial attributes and then our bookkeepers could complete the additional ones and process it through Zapier. Since Forms only support uploading to the attachment features, I started using that instead of Dropbox. And although I could use 3rd party forms, none of them had the advantage of using Lookups and Filters for searching and selecting an open purchase order, current Vendor, etc.

I know these files will not be able to stay in Coda forever due to size limitations. So ideally I could export those files to a Dropbox folder for archiving after they have been processed in Coda.

So although I used Coda to process the expenses by leveraging the custom attributes and Coda form, the hope would be I could always access the processed files in Dropbox since it supports searching the actual text in the files and can easily be searched from my MacBook universal search bar.

My problem is that I have no way of getting the files out of Coda without manually downloading them and transferring them to a folder. I then also have to manually rename the file to match the information that was already in Coda.

I had this same workflow set up in Airtable before switching to Coda. I couldn’t replicate that process until recently with the introduction of forms and attachments. I’m almost there, but I just can’t figure out how to get Zapier to recognize an attachment in Coda.

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Gotcha!

I’m not sure we’ll have a great way to automate this and you’re looking along the right paths already. This might end up being a trade-off between the two systems at the moment. I don’t think we have answers to your questions so far. It’s still a pretty new feature. We’ll keep this in mind when planning future work though.

To keep this from turning into only a support topic, let’s break out future questions into new topics in the “Ask the Community” category and we can pick things up there.

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Understood. Thanks @BenLee.

Alright…sorry for the delay. Just tried syncing over a file with dropbox/zapier, and filename came through. Are you seeing that on your end?

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Yep! Worked perfectly and was able to download the attachment. Thanks @Betty :slight_smile:

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@betty Hey, For a bit now we have been using this File attachment option for some of our Coda Forms for our organization, however recently whenever someone tries to upload a file, the whole screen goes white and never comes back around. I created another Forum asking about possible fixes or if this is an issue with the Option itself right now. I’ll attach a link to my thread as well but any direction or help would be appreciated!

Source Thread: File Upload Feature is no longer working

Hi @Vinny_DeLuca ,

I’m sorry to hear that, thanks for writing in! I don’t think we’ve had any other reports of this. Do you mind opening a thread with support by clicking the question mark in the bottom right hand corner of a doc, and then hitting “Send message”? That way, we can ask for more detailed information on your doc without you having to post it on the community.

Thanks!
Betty

To follow up for anyone else who might have run in to this issue, the fix is live now.
Thank you @Vinny_DeLuca for reporting this :pray:

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Dear ones,

I didn’t find it here in the threads, but I would like to know if you are having problems downloading attached files from your phone app. In my case, there is no option to download files like .xlxs or .docx, among others that were attached to “file” column type. Someone?

im trying to use zapier to copy a file to googledrive… but it looks like its only pulling the name and not the actual file. I uploaded an invoice (pdf) into coda. zapier imports and just creates a text file in google with the filename just plain text in it. like a text file that simple contains the letters “invoice.pdf”… but not the actual pdf.

what field should i be specifying?

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I’m also trying to achieve this, but I didn’t manage. Did you find a solution?

I ended up using a combination of items. Instead of a file upload I made a link to jotform. That, via Integromat (or zapier) saves the file from jotform to Dropbox and then copies that link back down to coda. That way I have a link to drop box. It’s not a direct upload unfortunately. I had to use jotform

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@Irfan_Khan, what an ingenious solution!

added to my tool box

max

Hi All

Just checking - is there still now way to download an attachment/file from a Coda table using make.com or zapier?
As per @Irfan_Khan’s comment above - Make.com only seems to be able to extract the file name from Coda? Although I see there’s now a pack to extract files to google drive, so it must be doable - any insights welcome please!

It’s possible. You just need to get the file’s direct link.

You can do that with an idiom:

ParseJson(thisRow.File.First()._Merge() + "", "$.publicUrl")

You pull this into a column of your table that Make/Zapier can see. The file is downloadable by this link with no extra authentication required.

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As usual @Paul_Danyliuk you came up with the solution, so thank you many times over! (I found your previous post on this after writing this comment).

I am concerned that when using the hidden _Merge formula it now says it is deprecated - Am I wrongly assuming that this means that it will stop working fairly soon?

This is great @Paul_Danyliuk !! Thanks for sharing!
I may be encountering a bug (or doing something wrong).
Every time I add a new row and attach a new file to a table, the URL of the newly uploaded file doesn’t show up (all previous ones do show up though). The cell with the formula in the newly created row shows empty (no error messages or anything) after I upload the file on the File cell of that row.
I can work around the problem by: deleting the formula, save, write the formula again, save (which makes me think this is likely a bug.

Pretty inconvenient though as it won’t automatically create new links for new rows!

Not really a bug because this is all internal functionality that wasn’t meant to be used :slight_smile:

This happens because when the upload finishes and the file is checked for viruses etc, it doesn’t trigger any recalculations to any formulas that would depend on it.

The workaround is to introduce recalculation by any other mechanism, e.g. to your formula you could add something like:

.Concatenate(If(Now(), "", ""))

which will do nothing but refresh the formula every second, picking on the URL within the second of when it appears. There are also other ways you could use, e.g. button-based or automation-based, to avoid those ever-triggered formulas.

Thanks for the explanation @Paul_Danyliuk !
Ever-triggered formulas sound resource intensive.
I’ll figure something with an automation “on row change”.