I’m assuming you have a reason for not simply running the automation and creating a database record at the time of the submission. Maybe the issue is that Wufoo doesn’t have an instant Trigger to kick off your seq, so you need to rely on time? (Suckage if so. I actually really had to work hard to come up with that scenario).
Not knowing much about wufu/datastore. I wonder if you could create Mailhook (I’ve seen but not tested Mailhook under Webhooks). Set Wufo to send form submissions to the mail hook email address. Surely mail hook is in instant trigger (fingers crossed). Alternatively, if Wufu is like Gravity Forms there maybe a web hook plugin that might get the job done better and without relying on the weak link of email deliverability. Webhooks are an instant trigger.
Another way to go might be to do what you have now… I’m guessing you may have 1+ records sitting in your seq waiting to be processed when your seq triggers based on clock time. Now here is the hard part that should be the easy part… Unlike zapier, I haven’t found much in the way of time calculation in Make. In a perfect world you’d add a clock calc module, map the form submission time and select “Add to SEQ if time is less than <4> hours old” - or however long the repeat interval you’ve set for your seq.
Sadly, this is not a perfect world. Here is a super lame hack I’ve been using to accomplish something similar and it does seem to work. Note success will be dependent on the format of the date field in wufu - over which you probably have some degree of control.
One of my modules provides a date in this format: December 2, 2022 2:32 PM
I run it through Text Parser Match Text module with “,” in the Pattern and the date mapped to the input. The result is: December 2 2022 2:32 PM
Next I take that output and map it to a SET VARIABLE module as TEXT in the following formula: (formatdate(TEXT;x)/1000-(formatdate(timestamp; x))
I arrived at this via trial and error so I can’t really recall why I need to divide by 1000 in one and not the other. But the point of this formula is to produce the time, in seconds, between the original event and now. (NOTE you can’t just freestyle this stuff like you can in excel. See screenshot to understand which items are MAKE operators).
If I haven’t lost you at this point you now have the age (in seconds) of your form submission. So to easily filter out submissions that are too old just convert your repeating period of your seq (say 4 hours) into seconds (60x60x4) and force your submissions to pass a filter you create limiting submissions to < 14,400 seconds. (Just using my example numbers).
Hopefully this helps. Even better, someone else wise replies with an easier method.
