Automating Tasks with Pipelines!

Automating Tasks Using Pipelines!

Now that you have your shiny new toy in the way of our latest feature, pipelines, you will want to learn ways you can begin to take advantage of this amazing new feature. In this post you will learn how to automate your tasks quickly, efficiently and most important easily through pipelines.

In this example I'll be using a simple Project Management application for the example use case. In this example we will need 3 tables; a Projects table, a Tasks table, and a Task Template table. I will also have a single relationship where Projects have many Tasks. Below is an example of my relationship diagram I will be working with.

For this example, I will keep the fields as simple as possible, so we are only looking at the information we will need for this pipeline. The Projects table will consist of two fields: Project Name and Project Type. The Tasks table will have a Task Name, Status and a Sort field. The Task Template table will have a Task Name, Project Type and a Sort field. The Project Type field is the most important field in this scenario as this is how we will query our Template Tasks table to locate and add/relate the correct records to our Project upon triggering. The Sort field is also important as this allows us to sort the Tasks in the order they should be completed for this particular Project type.

 
Step 1: Populate the Task Template table with the tasks you need for each variation of your Project Types. Below is the example I'll be working with.

Step 2: Assign a user token to your application

 Click on your name in the upper right > click, My Preferences > then Manage user tokens.

 From here create a new user token and assign it to your application. Or if you have already created a user token you can assign your app to an existing token. Remember to click save when you are done.

Step 3: Connecting to the Quick Base Channel

Click on the Pipelines tab in the upper left of your screen. Then click "Create a pipeline". Click on the Quick Base channel and click "Connect to Quick Base".

Now a screen will appear and you will be prompted to enter your company subdomain on Quick Base (Realm) and your user token. This is the first portion of your Quick Base URL. For example, if your URL is Hooli.quickbase.com. The subdomain will be Hooli.

Once ready click, Connect to Quick Base.

 
Step 4: Creating your trigger!

 Now that we have established a connection for the Quick Base channel we can get to the fun stuff! In this scenario I'll be using the Add Record trigger. Start by locating the Add record trigger and click and drag it into the first position in your pipeline.

 Once in place, select the table you want to use as the trigger. In this case we will be using our Projects table.

 Next specify the fields needed for subsequent steps in your pipeline. For this example we will need the Project Type field. Below is an example of what your trigger should look like.

Step 5: Creating your Query

1. Click and drag the "Search records" step just below our trigger.
2. Select the Template Task table from the table dropdown.
3. In the fields section, select Order, Project Type and Task Name.
4. Next click the "Add conditions" button and select the Project Type field.
5. Update your operator to "is", then locate the Project Type field from your previous step and drag it into the text box. Your query should now read "Project type is {{a.project_type}}". Below is an example of what this looks like. 

Step 6: Adding your Create Record Action

1. Locate the "Create record action" and drag it in place below our Search record query.
2. Select the Tasks table from the table dropdown.
3. Under "Select fields to Specify values" select; Task Name, Status, Order and Related Project(this is important so we can properly relate our new records to the Project record we just added).
4. Next use the steps above to populate each of the fields we selected.
   1. For Status, I will select the value "Not Started". NOTE: my status field is a multiple choice field which allows me to select this as it is a choice for the field.
   2. For Related Project, expand the Projects step and drag the Record ID# in place.
   3. For Order, expand the Search records step and drag the Order field into place.
   4. For Task Name, expand the Search records step and drag the Task Name into place.

Below is an example of creating this step.

Our pipeline is now complete! Flip the toggle in the upper right and turn your pipeline on!

Go back to your application and let's trigger our pipeline!