Performance Upgrade appears to have broken Zapier Integration

We’re a big user of Zapier to pass data between Knack and other applications like Zendesk.

It seems that Zapier is no longer receiving the values from derived fields like text-concatenation formulas and auto-increment fields.

It’s quite a disaster for our integrations. We search on these derived values to find a related ticket in Zendesk.

This coincided with the performance upgrade on Friday.

Further clarification. I’ve confirmed that no data is being passed by Knack to Zapier in Auto-mode.

I’m using the “Updated Record” event in Zapier for Knack.

In test mode, it retrieves these values (Stored and derived values) and successfully passes to another application.
e.g Slack Message

In auto mode, nothing is passed.

I presume you’ve raised this with Knack for them to investigate: support@knack.com

Hi Carl,
Yes - I created a detailed instruction to replicating the issue and sent through to support 3 days ago. It is still with engineering and has not as yet been added to the known issues at Knack: Performance Upgrade

An easy way to recreate this issue is as follows:

  1. Create App with a single table that includes derived fields like Auto-increment, Text concatenation
  2. Edit form to change a text value.
  3. Zapier to pass all field values (using Knack event of Updated Record) to a message in Slack.

When you run the Zap in Test Mode, it successfully passes all values to the Slack message (including derived fields)

When the Zap is in Auto-Run Mode, the text, connected field and date values are passed to the Slack Message. However, the derived fields are appear as NULL values.

I’m hoping this issue is acknowledged by engineering soon and given priority for resolution as I expect it will be breaking every customer’s zapier integration that relies on derived fields in the updated knack record event.

Hoping this is resolved soon for you @AdrianBell27622 - being the nervous type I’ve run some tests with an upgraded app with Make.com scenarios, and confirm that calculated fields are read correctly when the scenario is set to run automatically with record triggers.

Thanks Brad - I’m guessing the Make scenario used the same updated record event from Knack. In which case, the problem might be with Zapier. I’ve not used Make, but will look into it over the weekend. It’s a pretty daunting thought to create all our Zapier integrations, but it may be necessary as the required manual processing at the moment is really hurting us.

Does sound like something at Zapier’s end except this only started after the performance update with Knack. You mentioned you can re-create the bug with new zaps which means re-building them or the triggers won’t help.

I’ll add the upgrade from Integromat to Make.com has been excellent - while we did see some issues with old webhooks that needed rebuilding due to inconsistent firing. Rebuilding the webhooks fixed that, producing new urls and updating our JS code calling them. Others might comment on this, but for us Make.com had an initially steep learning curve but more control and functionality than we found with Zapier.

So I’m surmising here that there could be a minor change in how each service exchanges info that has changed if that provide any thoughts for you.

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I concur with @BradStevens, Make, or Integromat when I stated using it, has a steeper learning curve but, in my opinion, has more flexibility, especially when using routers.

Thanks Carl and Brad

I’m looking at hiring someone to recreate all of our integrations using Make if it solves our problem. It’s been a very disrupted week. It’s amazing how we’ve come to rely on the Knack-Zapier integration. I don’t have any indication on how long this will take to resolve, so it’s becoming desperate.

However, I’m struggling to get the following simple test scenario to work in Make.com

  1. Created Knack App with a single table that includes standard text and date fields and derived fields like Auto-increment, Text concatenation
  2. Have Knack Edit form to change a text value.
  3. Setup Make.com webhook to trigger Slack Message with updated record. I want all of the standard and derived fields to be passed across to the Slack message.

The available fields for the Slack Message seems to be limited to “1. RecordID.” i.e I’m not getting any of the other fields to pass values in my testing of Make.

Wait - I’ve got it working. Thanks again.

Make is a little different to Zapier after triggering the update, you just receive the record id. You then have a second step to retrieve the data using the record id.

I wonder if the reason why it works in Make and not in Zapier might be a microsecond delay caused by the second step. This could allow time for the derived values to be populated before being handed over.

Sounds like you got it working, you have to use a “Get ID” module after the webhook.

A big shout out to all of you in here - I have had tickets in since the morning of the 9th with both Knack and Zapier and not getting any help or even pointed in the right direction. The most I had from Zapier was they were aware of multiple Knack users experiencing problems - but they acted like the missing field values was only something I was reporting.

I have made the jump to Make - going to have hours of rebuilding here - but its light at the end of the tunnel and so far I am enjoying what I am seeing here in Make - doesn’t feel like I have “lost” anything for sure.

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Glad to hear things are working out for you in Make. You may want to checkout my good friend and fellow Knack Partner @andyoneil YouTube channel as he has created some useful Integromat Make tutorials.

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Thanks Carl - We’re still struggling unfortunately. It’s a big job for us to rebuild all of integration in Make.

It’s just unfortunate that most of our logic relies on the Updated Record in Knack and that the data exchange/mapping relies on the use of derived (Text Concatenation) fields which updates to slowly for Zapier after the performance upgrade.

Any word on whether there is a fix coming soon? There’s still no mention of this important issue on the Knack: Performance Upgrade Issues

Hi @AdrianBell27622 - sorry I’m not privileged to that sort of information, you’d need to contact Knack. :+1:

It for sure broke the Zapier Integration. It also has screwed my data up big time.

Hi Tim

Sorry to hear you’re experiencing some some challenges with your knack app as well.

We also also have some data integrity issues but I’m sure it is all as a result of the Zapier integration breaks.

In our case (as an example),

  1. An update to a knack record
  2. Triggers the creation of a ticket Zendesk
  3. Then updates the Knack record with the reference to the newly created Zendesk ticket

The data in knack is now different (no links to Zendesk tickets) because the integration is not getting past step 2.

We haven’t noticed any changes to the existing data (prior to the performance upgrade)

Do you think the root cause of your data issues might be related to the Zapier integration issues or something else?

Hi @AdrianBell27622.

I’ve just reported this both to the Zapier & Knack teams.
Has there been any of your connections, particularly the one that use the “updated record trigger”?

@KnackSupport,
Could you shed more light on this issue, and an ETA on the fix?

Hi Pablo

Our problem appears to be caused by “Updated Record Trigger” not correctly receiving derived fields.
e.g Entry is added to Table:
Field A (Text) : ABC
Field B (Numeric) : 123
Field C (Text Concatenation): [Field A]+“-”+[Field B]

When the record is updated, the derived value of Field C per the Text Concatenation formula above should equal ABC-123.

However, following the performance upgrade Field C is momentarily equals blank when using the updated record trigger.

The problem is that our integration is dependent on having available the text concatenated field value ABC-123. The integration does various lookups in other applications based on this.

The Zapier updated record trigger retrieves the details the updated record data in a single step.

Make/Integromat does this in two steps. (Step 1: retrieve RecordID. Step 2: read data using Record ID)

If you add an additional step in Zapier to subsequently reread the record, you will find the Text concatenation fields are populated.

Unfortunately, the whole Zap will need to process using the values retrieved in Step 2 rather than Step 1. So it is kind of recreating the whole Zap from scratch.

We’ve decided to rebuild all our integrations using Make/Integromat as it will require a similar work effort, but it is a long and painful process.

Putting this out there - what happens in Zapier if another step is added to retrieve the record using the ID from the record update trigger? Does that step retrieve the formula data?

I’m no Zapier user since switching to Integromat/Make years ago, but in Make Knack record triggers only supply the record ID and then we use another module/step to retrieve the full record.

Just a thought…