Action only on record creation

[alphacp]

I guess this may be a question regarding when to use an action and when to use an automation but the original question I wanted to ask is what condition can I use in an action to only fire when a new record is being added and not when I am editing an existing record. I have an action that is used when I save from an Form. It may be slightly more difficult to answer given that I am trying to use both the db preview and the desktop preview and it appears that the record is effectively "stored" even before I press the save button - I see it in the UI Table before I click save. 

I was thinking that a test whether _ROWNUMBER is blank or similar may work but I have not perfected the precise expression yet. Can anyone help? Thanks

[James_McFarlane]

@alphacp 

You can check if the record exists in the table, if does not then perform the desired action. This can be defined in the Only if this condition is true of the Behavior section in actions.

[alphacp]

That appears to be the problem, how to check. Everything I have tried so far returns that it already exists. I think this is caused by one of the preview features. I got close to a solution but not if I edit and save but not change anything. 

[James_McFarlane]

Can you place screen shot of what you have tried?

Take a look at this Tips & Tricks they go in line with what you are trying to accomplish: 
Tips-Tricks/How-to-Prevent-Duplicate-Records 

[TeeSee1 · Accepted solution]

One way you could try to accomplish this is

• Create a Form and assign you action on save. Make sure the system gen'd Add opens this form.
• Disable the System gen'd Edit action because this also opens the Form created above.
• Create a Linktorow action to the System generated Form. This does not trigger the action on edit.

This seems to do the job, at least when I try it. There could be other ways like you are trying using an expression on the action but I could not get it to work...

[alphacp]

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@TeeSee1 wrote:

One way you could try to accomplish this is

Yes indeed this does appear to be the case. Or of course use an automation which somehow seems to know the difference. It was interesting that _RowNumber was not blank when adding a record and [_THISROW-BEFORE] was not supported.

Thanks for the response

[TeeSee1]

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@alphacp wrote:

use an automation which somehow seems to know the difference.

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What is your expression to use this bot's knowledge to distinguish add from edit?

Use ISBLANK([_THISROW-BEFORE])?

[alphacp]

None, when adding an event to Automation you can specify "Adds only"

[TeeSee1]

Ah, I see.