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.
