Automation Action Record Value of ThisRowBefore

[Markus_Malessa]

I have a bot set up that is supposed to record in a 'Remarks' column when an item is reassigned from one person to another. The bot triggers on an data change event and the associated action is as below:

First off I receive an error in the expression when trying to set the value in the column under the action itself, however when I check the action settings in the bot, I do not get the expression error.

Secondly, this just records in the Remarks column the [Tech] info after it was saved.

Does an action flow not have the availability to access [_THISROW_BEFORE] and [_THISROW_AFTER]? Can this only be accomplished through reports and templates? Does anyone have a workaround for this?

Thank you.

[TeeSee1]

I have to rely on experts on the question of the availability of before&after field values outside templates.

I can propose a not so pretty workaround if you would be interested based on bunch of actions.

1. Create a temporary col to hold a next assignee
2. Create a form to capture user input in the Next Assignee
3. Create an action (APP: Go to another view within this app) to open the form 2) using LINKTOROW
4. Create an action to update the Remarks column using the assignee and the next assignee cols (what you have in your CONCATENATION)
5. Create an action to copy the value from the next assignee to the current assignee
6. Create an action sequence to to do 4) and 5)
7. In Behavior >> Event Action of  the Form 2), set the action sequence 6)

You need a bunch of house cleaning to hide unnecessary action buttons (and some Form fields)  but only show 3) to initiate a new assignment.

😅Hope this will be useful..

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @Markus_Malessa , You seem to be concatenating the previous contents of the [Remarks] column. This means previous assigned to is available in the concatenated column. In such a case, may we know any specific reason that you cannot simply use "CONCATENATE([Remarks], "Reassigned to " , [Tech], " on ",TODAY())

[TeeSee1]

@Suvrutt_Gurjar 

You gave me another idea. Perhaps the Remarks col can be parsed to retrieve the previously assigned tech to construct a new string. It maybe tough/clumsy without Regex though.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Yes , correct @TeeSee1 , that is also worth trying. But I believe it does not serve much purpose of parsing again just for immediate next statement because the earlier value is anyway available close by, unless I am missing some point.

A similar requirement post thread below

https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/AppSheet-Q-A/User-Change-Audit-Trail/td-p/226324