Does anyone know if we can use automations to update fields by append new data values but still retaining the old data on the same field.
For example, Field “Favorite Colors” has a Value of: Red
Contact fills out another form indicate different “Favorite Color” is: Blue
Normally the New value would overwrite past value, but I want to know if we can just have it append to look like:
Favorite colors: Red || Blue
I know when you import you can store Multiply values in one field, but in automations you only have the option to update new value or clear the past value.
Thanks in advance!
If not possible in Active Campaign that is okay, as I do have a backup plan via 3rd party integration.
You may want to use the checkbox on your forms, so that the contact can select multiple answers.
You can use this custom field type to tell you multiple things about a contact. For example, maybe you want to know all their favorite colors. By presenting contacts with a checkbox field, they can tell you that exact information.
Currently, when you update a field in an automation, it overwrites the existing value.
A good workaround to maintain all old info is to have an action that backs up the data as a row in a Google sheet at the end of each automation.
Thanks for the response. Yeah, I thought the checkbox method would work, but just ended up overwriting the past values. What I am really looking for is for the automation to keep track of and compile the values on a specific field.
Are there any plans on a feature that would allow you to keep past values and append new ones on the ActiveCampaign roadmap?
Thanks, I will try that. Othwise, my idea is to have a webhook call to a 3rd party tool and just have that tool complile and send back and update the field.
What about if you assign them a tag with each color, instead of using custom fields? You could potentially create an automation that adds a tag every time they select a new color.
Otherwise, I’ve shared your feedback with our team. While I’m not currently aware of this on the roadmap, any announcements regarding updated features will be here in the community, so continue to check in so you don’t miss any updates!
This would be a good use case for Custom Objects vs. Custom Fields if you are an Enterprise customer and have access to Custom Objects.
If you absolutely needed to do this via Custom Fields you would have to: 1. pull the existing Custom Field value 2. append the new data to it 3. update the Custom Field value with the new appended data. I don’t think there would be a good way to do this natively in automations without introducing a 3rd party into the mix.
The Tagging method is an interesting idea. I will explore that in future automations, but for my use case it would not be optimal. Thank you for the continual feedback and support!
I appreciate you sharing my feedback. I was able to produce the results that I wanted with a 3rd party tool.
Thanks for chiming in. Yeah, I considered a custom object but I am not on the Enterprise plan. So, I needed to get creative lol.
Yup, that is exactly what I did, except I already had the data being feed from an external form to create/ update the contact record with the correct values. I tried the automation route and had waterfall logic in place to append data but ran into the overwriting value issue.
I got figured out and am pretty happy with the results. Ideally, I would have loved to have all the processes/automation centralized, but for the time being my solution works with very minimal complexities.
with very minimal complexities.