Automation Trigger - Excel Row Added

How To
1

Hi there,

How can I change my automation so that it only triggers when a new row is added in Excel and not every minute?

Cheers

3

There is an excel module named “Watch rows“. It is a trigger module. When applied, the automation triggers when the row is added.

4

Welcome to the Make community!

Polling Triggers

This is because the module is a POLLING trigger, and not an INSTANT (Webhook) trigger.

There are two main types of triggers, Polling (scheduled), and Instant (webhooks). Polling triggers can only run on a schedule. Instant triggers can be run as soon as data is received by the webhook.

  • Polling means Make checks external service for changes (pull changes to Make).
  • Webhook (instant) triggers means external service calls Make when there are new changes (push changes to Make).

The module you are using does not push changes — it’s basically a API request that Make has to occasionally “call” to fetch the latest changes/items.

To find out more on the different types of Trigger modules, see refer to Types of Modules and Webhooks sections of the Make Help Centre.

If you want your scenario to only run when there is new data (and not on a schedule or timed interval), see if your app has an “Instant” or “Webhook” trigger in Make. If not, check if the third-party service has a feature that can send out a webhook when content is created/updated - and then you can point it to a “Custom Webhook” trigger in your scenario.

Unfortunately, the Excel integration does not have an Instant Webhook trigger module. I suggest using Google Sheets instead, as it has a Watch Changes webhook trigger module.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues.

— @samliew
P.S.: investing some effort into the tutorials in the Make Academy will save you lots of time and frustration using Make!

5

Thank you for the explanation. I’ve had a look and it appears there is no instant trigger for a row being added in microsoft excel. This seems strange as all other automation software i’m familiar with has this.

Is this correct?

6

IIRC Excel never had an instant module, only Google Sheets. Hence I strongly recommend that everyone use Google Sheets instead. An alternative is airtable.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues.

— @samliew

1 Like
7

Cheers mate. Good insight