Hey everyone,
I’ve run into a few problems when using the Airtable → Update Record step in ActivePieces, and I’m not sure if this is expected behavior or a bug. Hoping someone can confirm or advise.
1. Confusion around “Dynamic Value” toggle
When updating certain fields, I’m unsure whether “Dynamic value” should be enabled or disabled.
Depending on what I choose, the update step either errors out or updates the field incorrectly. It’s not entirely clear from the UI what the toggle actually controls on a technical level.
2. Multi-select fields get cleared unintentionally
For Airtable multi-select fields:
- If I leave the field as “Select an option” (because I don’t want to modify it),
- ActivePieces clears the existing selections in Airtable.
This means the update step overwrites the entire multi-select field instead of simply leaving it unchanged.
3. Boolean fields always get overwritten
For Airtable checkbox/boolean fields:
- There’s no option to “ignore” the field.
- If the actual Airtable record is true, but the update step shows the checkbox as empty (because I don’t want to change it), ActivePieces sends false and overwrites the existing value.
This also happens in reverse (true → false or false → true unintentionally).
Why this is an issue
If you have automations that update only some fields on an Airtable record, these unintended overwrites can cause serious data inconsistencies — especially with multi-selects and booleans.
Request
It would be extremely helpful if ActivePieces could:
- Allow fields to be left untouched during an update (NULL/no-op option).
- Clarify the meaning and impact of the “Dynamic value” toggle.
- Prevent multi-select and boolean fields from defaulting to destructive updates when left unconfigured in the step.
If anyone has found a workaround, I’d love to hear it - otherwise hoping the team can improve this behavior because it impacts a lot of Airtable use cases.
Thanks!