_THISROW_BEFORE

[Qiro]

I'm running a bot that adds a new row to a sheet given a specific condition.

Is there a way to use _THISROW_BEFORE when pulling data from a parent to a child sheet?

[_THISROW_BEFORE].[Data] doesn't seem to pull anything through from the parent.

If not, is there a way to pull the previous value without complex expressions?

[Markus_Malessa]

To my understanding [_THISROW_BEFORE] only works in the sense of reports and using templates or email text, where you can use 'Some text in an email where previous value is <<[_THISROW_BEFORE].[Data]>> and new value is <<[_THISROW_AFTER].[Data]>>'. Apparently _thisrow_before does nothing inside an Action evaluation if the action should actually fire, nor can you use it to say in a remarks column to concatenate this is the previous value and user x changed it to this on timestamp. I have not come up with a work around for this, because I have the need for recording previous values and new values in an edit log table and using automation along with actions does not get this accomplished unfortunately.

[Qiro]

Hey, thanks for the input. I have, in the meantime, come up with a sort of workaround, but it isn't tidy and I'm struggling to make it all work coherently. It doubles up in the log table right now.

Essentially, it works like this:

There's a binary flag attached to the data I want to store in the log. It checks for this flag, saves the data, then changes the flag before updating to the new data. Rinse and repeat.

I don't love it, but it's the best I have right now.

[Markus_Malessa]

I do stand corrected on the evaluation if the action should fire. You can use [_THISROW_BEFORE].[Data] <> [_THISROW_AFTER].[Data] to determine to fire the action. But lets say I want to add a row to an edit log and that log table has a field for 'What Changed' and I would like to set the text to 'Row changed from [_THISROW_BEFORE].[Data] to [_THISROW_AFTER].[Data]'. In this scenario it would take the after data in both places.

[Joseph_Seddik]

I wouldn't like to be perceived as insisting, but I sincerely believe you'll be much better served by redesigning your flow as per my advise in your other post, rather than running into unnecessary complexities. In countless occasions, I've seen problems get increasingly compounded through pursuing solutions in the code and overlooking simple flow/architecture improvement.