We’ve been using automated tasks a bit and come across a situation a few times now where we need to create multiple tasks for different conditions, for example lets say we want a task to fill in an option field to option 1, option 2, option 3 depending on the situation. In this instance we need to create 3 separate tasks, which essentially all do the same thing except set 1 field to a different value.
the suggestion is to add an if condition is met run task then stop, else go onto the next task. this way the we can still run a task to do slightly different things depending on slightly different circumstances without it being used as a way to get around task limits.
Another option (though probably only for manually run tasks) would be to add to be able to add task fields, when a task button is added, have the option to display the fields, end then use those fields as variables within the task itself. so i would get the task option and select “option 3” for example, and all the updated records would do there clever task stuff while also setting “option 3” into the option field
We’ve been working more recently on updating on how we deal with complicated tasks.
Some examples:
Ability to update a record after certain actions are performed. For example, after generating a PDF in a task or sending an email you can update a record.
Ability to daisy-chain tasks. After a task is completed, you’ll be able to trigger another task. This can help with ensuring a second action runs only after the first task is completed.
The idea of creating if/else and variables are both ideas we’ve contemplated and we likely won’t add If/else in the very near future. There are several reasons and it mostly boils down to how we deal with tasks. Variables are certainly something we’ve investigated and it has come up many times in the past and will likely add in the coming future.
Those above features are for now only been implemented on Private Cloud servers and we hope to implement those on all servers in the coming weeks.
The primary reason these are not yet in production is simply the resource intensiveness of these new features. Several users testing it are generating over 1000 PDFs a day. For some reason, PDFs require lots of computing power. So, we’re looking for ways to streamline this, speed it up, and hopefully roll it out to all servers. I’m hoping this can be available within a few 3-4 weeks.
