Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.

What's my plan?
All Suites Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus
Support Team, Professional, or Enterprise

Summary: ◀▼

You can connect Airtable to action flows using a personal access token to automate tasks like creating, updating, deleting, and looking up records and comments. This integration supports batch operations and schema lookups, helping you manage data and add context through comments directly within workflows. Use a dedicated service account for secure, attributed external actions in your automated processes.

By connecting the action builder to external systems, such as Airtable, admins can integrate Zendesk with external systems in automated workflows, improving collaboration and maintaining a seamless experience across multiple platforms.
Note: The steps associated with external systems in action flows are referred to collectively as external actions.
This article contains the following topics:
  • Connecting Airtable to action builder
  • Using Airtable actions in action flows

Connecting Airtable to action builder

Before you can include external actions in your action flows, you must connect the action builder to the external system.

When connecting to external systems for use in action flows, the following best practices are recommended:
  • All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the external system. Therefore, it's a best practice to use a dedicated service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external system.
  • All integrations request access to necessary scopes. However, it's important that you review and validate the scopes before authorizing the connection to the external system.
  • When managing credentials for API key-based tools, such as OpenAI, it's best to store keys in a secure vault or credential manager.

To create a personal access token

The Airtable connection requires a personal access token (PAT) for authentication. See the Airtable documentation for details.
  1. Create a personal access token at https://airtable.com/create/tokens.
  2. Grant the token access to the specific bases you want to use.
  3. Ensure the token has the following scopes: data.records:read, data.records:write, data.recordComments:read, data.recordComments:write,schema.bases:read
  4. Save the token or keep the window open so you can copy and paste it into Zendesk.

    You'll need it when connecting Airtable to action builder.

To connect action builder to Airtable
  1. In Admin Center, click Apps and integrations in the sidebar, then select Actions > Action flows.
  2. Create or edit an action flow.
  3. Open the step sidebar.
  4. Under External actions, click Airtable.
  5. Click Connect.
  6. Follow Airtable's prompts to enter your Airtable access token and complete the connection.
    Note: All external actions performed by an action flow are attributed to the user who connected the external system. Therefore, it is a best practice to use a dedicated service account rather than personal credentials when connecting to each external system.

After you've connected to the system, you'll see an indicator that it's connected and details about the instance you're connected to, as well as the actions available for Airtable.

Using Airtable actions in action flows

The following Airtable actions are available:
  • Create record
  • Update record
  • Delete record
  • Lookup record
  • Lookup comments
  • Batch create records
  • Batch delete records
  • Add comment to record
  • Lookup table schema

Creating a record

Use the Create record action to create a new record in an Airtable table.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record fields (or table-specific dynamic fields)

Base ID starts with "app" (e.g., appAbCd1234EfGhIj) and can be found in your Airtable URL.

Table name can be the table name (for example, "Contacts") or table ID (starts with "tbl").

After selecting a base and table, the action will dynamically load that table's specific fields. Record fields should be formatted as "FieldName: Value, Field2: Value2" for arrays using semicolons (Tags: tag1; tag2).
Output Record details including ok status, baseId, tableName, and record object (with id, createdTime, and fields).

Updating a record

Use the Update record action to modify an existing record in an Airtable table.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record ID, Record fields (or table-specific dynamic fields)

Record ID starts with "rec" (e.g., recAbCd1234EfGhIj).

After selecting a base and table, the action will dynamically load that table's specific fields. Only provide values for fields you want to update. Existing values for fields you don't specify will remain unchanged.
Output Record details including ok status, baseId, tableName, and record object (with id and updated fields).

Deleting a record

Use the Delete record action to permanently delete a specific record from an Airtable table.
Important: This action permanently deletes the record and cannot be undone. Use with caution.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record ID
Output Deletion details including ok status, baseId, tableName, deleted confirmation, and record id.

Looking up a record

Use the Lookup record action to retrieve a record by its ID from an Airtable table. Use this action to retrieve detailed information about a specific record, including all of its field values. The output schema dynamically reflects the table's actual field structure.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record ID
Output Record details including ok status, baseId, tableId, tableName, and record object (with id, createdTime, and fields with their values).

Looking up comments

Use the Lookup comments action to retrieve all comments on an Airtable record.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record ID

Optional: Page size, Offset

Page size controls how many comments to return per request (1-100, default: 100). Use the offset value from the response to fetch the next page of comments. An empty offset string indicates no more pages are available.
Output Comments array with ok status, baseId, tableName, recordId, comments (each with id, text, createdTime, lastUpdatedTime, and author details), and pagination offset.

Batch creating records

Use the Batch create records action to create multiple records at once in an Airtable table.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Records

Format multiple records as "FieldName: Value, Field2: Value2" and separate each record with "---" (three dashes). Example: "Name: John Doe, Status: Active\n---\nName: Jane Smith, Status: Done". This is useful for bulk data import operations.
Output Records array with ok status, baseId, tableName, and array of created records (each with id and createdTime)

Batch deleting records

Use the Batch delete records action to delete multiple records at once from an Airtable table. This action is useful for bulk cleanup operations.
Important: This action permanently deletes all specified records and cannot be undone. Use with caution.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs Required: Base ID, Table name, Record IDs

Record IDs can be provided comma-separated or one per line (e.g., "recAbCd123, recEfGh456, recIjKl789").
Output Records array with ok status, baseId, tableName, and array of records (each with id and deleted confirmation)

Adding a comment to a record

Use the Add comment to record action to post a comment on an Airtable record. Comments are visible to all collaborators with access to the record. Use this action to add notes, updates, or context to records from your Zendesk workflows.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs

Required: Base ID, Table name or ID, Record ID, Comment text
Output Comment details including ok status, baseId, tableIdOrName, recordId, and comment object (with id, text, createdTime, and author details including id, email, and name).

Looking up a table schema

Use the Lookup table schema action to retrieve the schema and field definitions for an Airtable table. Use this action to discover the structure of a table, including all available fields and their types. This is particularly useful when building dynamic workflows that need to adapt to different table structures. The tableId from this response can be used for more reliable table references in other actions.

This action has the following inputs and outputs:

  Variables
Inputs

Required: Base ID, Table ID or name
Output Table schema including ok status, baseId, tableId, tableName, and table object (with id, name, primaryFieldId, description, fields array with id/name/type/description, and views array with id/name/type).
Powered by Zendesk