Very new to the community I’m evaluating Make as my long term automation platform, but I’m running into a problem I cannot seem to solve with the Todoist connection. I’ve combed the community posts, the templates and I’ve tried several workarounds, but nothing gets me to where I need to be.
I’m working on a scenario that triggers when tasks are completed in Todoist and then writes their details into a Google Sheet. I have figured out how to modify and map all the data I need EXCEPT a consistent and bombproof way of representing the completion date.
The issues is that for all recurring type tasks in Todoist, the “dateCompleted” field is left empty in the JSON. I have tried to work around the issue by using a “Get Task” operation and referencing the “updated_at” field, but this uses extra operations and I’ve already run into a scenario where it won’t give me the desired result.
Is there an easy way to access the initiation date/time of a webook or the time of an event trigger? I can see this in my queue, but I can’t seem to find any way of accessing it. I’m open to any and all other ways of getting a completion date/time here because it seems like this should be super simple (it is in every other platform I’ve tested) so I feel like I’m missing something obvious.
You can access the scenario start datetime by using the {{var.scenario.executionStartedAt}} variable (you don’t have to type this in - select from the variables panel).
Do note this may be slightly off by a few seconds depending on how fast the external service sent the webhook request to and received by Make (and won’t reflect the exact second/millisecond that it was completed on the external service). But if you just want to record the date, this would be a reasonable variable you can use.
You can also use the variable {{now}} to get the current time down to the millisecond, which might be different from the executionStartedAt variable.
If you need it in a specific date format, see Tokens you can use to format a date variable using the built-in function formatDate.
Links
Here are some useful links and guides you can use to learn more on how to use the Make platform, apps, and app modules. I found these useful when I was learning Make, and hope they might benefit you too —
I should have mentioned I did try the above solution and it works except if you have any errors (which I was having some). When I used it, it reflects when the scenario is rerun vs when the webhook was triggered. Is there a way to force it to look at the time the webhook was initially triggered?
Yes, you can do a Set Variable module (as shown in my screenshot) with the above-mentioned variable near the beginning of the scenario, so you can re-access the time it was originally triggered.
But instead of that, you should definitely learn how to handle errors so the scenario can retry in the same execution.
You might want to add some error handling to your modules to handle exceptions, so the failing module(s) can automatically be retried or ignored. By handling any errors by adding a “Error handler” to the module, the scenario won’t throw an error and get turned off.
For more information on how to handle errors, see:
Totally agreed on the error handling, it’s on my list.
I set up the “Set Variable” and confirmed it executes within about 2 seconds of the actual update time recorded in Todoist. The downside I’m seeing is that it consumes an operation.
This gives me another functional workaround, but I’m curious if there is a way to do this without eating up an operation. Below is the info coming from the Todoist app. Is there a way to tell if the data is missing because of a limitation in Todoist vs a limitation in the Make app? As I mentioned, most other integration services have a field for the date/time the event is initiated or the record is updated coming in from the trigger.
If it’s an app deficiency, can it be modified or a feature request put in to improve it?
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If it’s blank it’s more likely that the external service is not sending the data, but you still can contact support to investigate further.
For bugs like this, directly contacting support can often lead to a faster resolution. They have access to your specific account details, scenario and scenario logs, server-side logs, and internal tools and resources, which allows them to investigate more thoroughly than what you have access to. Additionally, sharing sensitive information about your situation might not be suitable for an open forum discussion.
