Trigger BOT by Action Button without any Data change

[jyothis_m]

Is it possible to trigger a BOT without any data change in Table through any action button. Presently i do this through Action Button which changes some data to Trigger the BOT. But the data change is unnecessary. Is there any option to directly trigger the BOT with a Button.

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @jyothis.m

I think it is possible.
However, I need to know what you want to do and why you don’t want to do the data change.
Sending an email, perhaps?

The answer is going to depending on what that is.
In general, it seems like our could do it by creating something like a trigger table and calling another process, but it would be a lot of work.

[jyothis_m]

Thanks for the reply Takuya. What i intend to do is to send some reports collecting data from a table. Its not a row level action actually. But the Action Button presently changes the data in a column in the table just to trigger the bot. Which i feel is unnecessary.

[takuya_miyai]

Hi @jyothis.m

If you just want to output a report of the list, you can update the records in another table as @juli0 advised and output the data in the target table or slice to PDF.

It looks like this.

1. Create a table to be triggered
2. Create a Number column
3. Create an Action that increments the Number column
4. Output the data of the target table (or slice) when the data of the trigger table is updated by the Action

pdf template example

appendix

help.appsheet.com

Template Start Expressions

Using Start expressions in your workflow templates.

[jyothis_m]

Thanks for the reply @Takuya_Miyai . Will definitely try this. But still if some direct button trigger option was available for Triggering BOT from within App, it would be much easier and direct.

[juli0]

Not really, bots can be triggered by a condition on a table (adds, uptades, deletes) or they can be scheduled.
If you want to use a specific button that does nothing but trigger the bot, you have to do a data change at some point, maybe not in the same table but you will have to add, update or delete something…
The button doesn’t really triggers the bot, it just makes the data change that triggers the bot

[jyothis_m]

Thanks for the reply Julio. Scheduled BOT is ok. But what in case I have to send the report manually other than the schedule. Presently i think it is not possible without an unnecessary data change

[Steve]

A data change of some sort is required to trigger a bot at an arbitrary time.

[jyothis_m]

Thanks for the reply @Steve . Is it possible to add this as a feature request. I think it would be useful for everyone.

[Jordan_Askew]

Hi Steve,
why can’t we use an action button to trigger a bot? it would completely be alot more easier. At this point i have made an action button to accept a quote and then i want that action to trigger a bot to send the quote to the customer. it would make my life so much easier to do it this way rather than adding another column and a button in the form to say would you like to email this quote? and answer yes and having to use the correct formula to make the bot work. it would be easier to program the bot to perform this job when this action button was pressed.
can i do that? it would be nice.
thanks
ashley

[jyothis_m]

Hi @Jordan_Askew

I think in your case already you are making a data change action with Accept. Can’t is be directly used to trigger the BOT with BOT condition that Quote=“Accepted”.

[Jordan_Askew]

the accepted button is still an action button and so a workflow situation not a change in information on the row to trigger a workflow.

[jyothis_m]

sorry. I didn’t fully understand that. Can you pls explain what the action does exactly.

[Marc_Dillon]

Action to run workflow Feature Requests

An action to run an workflow, like to generate a report. Now it is possible to do that indirectly: I can create a “generate” collumn, an action to add 1 to this collumn and an workflow that runs on “generate” collumn update. The problem on this is that I have to make changes on the database just for this action. Changes on the databse simply for these purposes makes the database not clean.

[rzarate]

Late to the party this is what I do:

- Create a Reporting log table, nothing fancy, a Timestamp and the name of the report to run.
- Create an action to add a record  to this table.
- Set a bot to start when a record is added or changed in this table and run/send your report
- Keep the log entry or use another bot action to delete it

Posting this to help others in the same situation.

[proxapplication]

If you have more then 1 automation connected to action bottoms that would make the situation even more tricky but of cores there is a solution to that. I always use number values for the trigger columns and make conditions like [send a reminder]<100 , [print labels]>100. And the action bottom sets the values for those 2 columns like 

Send a reminder 

Condition [send a reminder]<100 (for the automation booth) (data change)

set values [send a reminder]-1 and  [print labels]=100 

Print labels 

Condition [Print labels]>100 (for the automation booth) (data change)

action set values [print labels]+1 and [send a reminder]=100

since you are using the <> signs 100 is gonna be the not triggering point for the both automations and once you trigger 1 of them is gonna go above or below that number when the other one is still 100. Just like that you can make multiple action bottom automations.

Also if you would like to make more then 2 you can play with the numbers to make it work with simple math (use +101 for the third one and make the condition if it is >200)

[Tragertt]

I am responding now because I had this problem and just figured it out. What I did was added an action that updates a column value from no to yes. I then made an automation that triggers on a data change to send out my report and added a data action to the automation that changed the value of the same column back to no. Its a work around but it works perfectly. Hope this helps.