👂 Feedback needed: scripts in automations that shouldn't be scripts

[helloitse]

Concatenate an encoded URL

New Formula: URL Encoder

It would be great to have encode and decode formulas generating URLs.

I currently use scripts to generate pre-filled Calendly URLs. All the values are in Fibery already but scripts are the only way to encode text.

Automatically set State or Select Fields
I have to use a script to read text fields (from integrations) or extract data from date fields to set the value of State fields and select fields. Examples:

• convert the Deal Stage from Hubspot Integration to a Fibery State.
• set the “Quarter” dropdown given the fiscal quarter of the date field in the Payments database
  It would be great if we could set rules for these field types just as we do for relation fields.

Call a webhook/URL

Emit Webhook as an Action

I’m looking to loop external softwares into actions taken within Fibery. For example, whenever an automation is triggered or a button pressed, I’d want to be able to emit a network call to a specific endpoint, and include query param and body data, pulled dynamically from the entity that triggered the automation (or table which owns the button). Is this possible, currently? It would let me use other services like Make or N8N for very complex automation workflows, based on events from within Fibe…

It’d be a significant UX improvement to create a webhook action instead of writing JS to call webhooks.

Using the Outputs of Prior Script Steps

Do automation actions return step results? Can we use them further down the automation stack?

In my experience, no. I hope this is an update released this year. This kind of functionality makes developing in Airtable quick and easy. It would no doubt save time when building in Fibery too. In my case I need to generate an 8 character alphanumeric string as part of a user friendly ID. This part is easily handled by a script. It would be ideal if I can simply return this string from the script and then reference it as a step result later in my automation.

Many low-code builders allow for thew use of scripts within the workflow and setting properties with the UI. Zapier, HubSpot, and Airtable come to mind most easily. Right now, only other script actions can use the outputs from a script action. In practice, we want to update properties, add the outputs to emails or slack messages using the outputs of a script.