Using input in an automation in various steps

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Hello,

as I am very knew to Coda, I hope that (1) I am posting this question within the correct category and (2) this question has not be answered before (I was searching but could not find a hint!)

I am working on Coda for the last four or five days and am stuck with an automation I am working on:

  • I have a Project table in which I keep track of the metadata of a project such as start and end date, priority, owner, etc. and I have a

  • ToDo table which contains all todos I am working on including the individual tasks for each project. Both tables are therefore connected in order to identify which tasks belong to which projects.

I am now working on an automation, which should include a couple of steps:

  1. Adding a new line to the Project table
  2. Opening the new record as a page
  3. … now I want to enter data like project name, start and end date, etc. Once I have that data entered and closed the page I want the automation to continue and
  4. Add a new line to the ToDo table which needs to include the project name defined in step 3.

In the last step I am having the problem: how can I (1) continue the automation once I have closed the project page and (2) use the project name from step 3 in step 4. My understanding is that Coda does not know the concept of variables so I was looking at the “thisrow” function but this did not work as well.

Any help, thoughts, ideas are appreciated - I am sure the problem sits in front of the keyboard :wink:

Thanks!

Sven

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Hi Sven,

Welcome to Coda!

You are indeed posting into the correct category.

What you are trying to do is quite ambitious for your first week!

I have some comments from the way that I have done something similar:

  1. Consider having all you project meta data in the project row. Add a button that will duplicate a template project page. The project template will have two views - one into the Project table, the next into the ToDo table.
  2. When you click on the duplicate page button, Coda will create a copy of the template page, with views of project and ToDo, with select control filters to filter only for this project. (I have been told that it is possible to automatically filter into the correct project - I have not yet had the time to explore and implement.
  3. Enter the select filter for the new project. This will filter the project view to the relevant project.
  4. Enter the ToDo items in the ToDo view. The table will automatically have the project filled on the ToDo row.

In this document: Knowledge Acquisition Tool I have implemented something very similar to what you are looking for - I have just used the word “Gap” where you have “Project”.

Good luck, shout if you have further questions.

2 Likes
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That sounds like an interesting approach - let me work on it and I will let you know about the outcome :wink:

Thanks a lot!