How does AP determine that there is a "new" Row in Google Sheets?

Occasionally, AP doesn’t recognise a new row of data in Google Sheets. so I am wondering how it decides that a row is ‘new’

Its very rare, but it happens. If I knew how it works I could perhaps figure out what causes it to fail.

For example:

  • Will deleting the last row and adding new data into the row that appears be considered a ‘new’ row, even if that row number was previously full?
  • What if I just clear the last row and add in new data, is that a ‘new row’?
  • What if I delete 10 rows at the top of the sheet, will the bottom row still be considered ‘new’ even if it’s row number is lower than the last row processed?

Maybe understanding Active Pieces’ internal rule will answer all these hypotheticals.

You brought a very good point, it stores the last row number and in the next iteration it looks for rows after that number.

We are looking for other option, since the current way causes issues with specific scenarios, one option is to store a snapshot of the sheet instead of a number but we need to calculate and be careful how large the sheet can be.

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I’m familiar with other workflow automations, but I still have problems with how ActivePieces’ Google Sheets integration works. You really need to improve and simplify it.

What do you suggest? @anrikaz

Thank you! :raised_hands: That is exteremely useful to know.

This is a very good question, and I have to add to it.

My MAIN issue comes after creating an automation.

When I connect the sheet in the initial process, it is confusing how to get it to recognize a new row.

For example, say I connect a sheet, and it has 10 rows in it. When I publish the sheet, does it start on row 11, or does it start after the row I selected in the example data for testing? Or does it start from the top and if no row is ever added to row 2 (because it already existed) then will it never run?

From my testing it is very hard to figure out what is going on and why my automations only seem to start half the time.

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