Field Mapping

To allow apps to exchange information freely, we need to “map” output from one action as an input in the other.

You can find data from the previous actions inside the action argument dropdown.

Here is how this would look like for a Playbook that creates a Github issue (action 1) and sends a Slack message with the issue link.

To add multiple inputs in one argument box use commas ❜ . If you use multiple arguments, your action will run as many separate times as there are arguments. 

So in the example above, the Playbook will send two messages: one with the issue title and one with the link. 

Mapping data to tables

Objects to tables

Some apps such as Google Sheets, Notion, and Coda take tables as input, whereas apps like Asana may return individual fields as an output. 

So input and output might not always be directly compatible. Think about it as the children’s game shape sorter, in which you need to put the correctly-shaped item into the appropriate hole. 

We can’t insert a table into the place of an individual argument because they are incompatible. Instead, we need to break the table into individual parts and map them.

Let’s try to map our Microsoft Outlook event information to a Notion database. Click on the drop-down labeled “custom field mapping.” You will see all available columns pulled up from your Notion database. Now, all you need to do is map the fields to each column.

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Tables to tables

Mapping tables to tables can be done automatically, on the other hand.

For example, you can send data from a Google Sheet to Notion or from our scraper to Coda. Those apps both output tables and take tables as inputs. 

Data will be mapped based on the column names automatically. So make sure the column names match precisely in both tables. 

Google Sheets is an exception, however. Its API allows us to create new columns in an existing sheet. This way you don’t need to map data fields or create matching columns. Google Sheets will create new columns if it can’t find them.