Are Automations the BEST WAY to clear a sheet before a Bridge Workflow is run?

NeilKY

I've seen various ideas on how to clear a sheet using bridge before beginning a workflow. However, could it be as simple as this?:

1. Add a checkbox column such as "Delete Row"
2. Use Bridge to change all rows to be removed using an "update sheet" in Bridge.
3. Use automation to move rows out when the row is checked instead of a bridge command.

It would require you clean up the sheet that it's moved to occasionally, but this method would be really efficient and retain a backup of the data. Benefits:

1 GET to retrieve sheet rows.

1 UPDATE call to set checkboxes (up to 500 rows per batch).

Zero DELETEs — row removal handled by native automation.

It would also only work if there were no notes or files on the row, or they would stay right? Not bad.

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I could just setup automations that use "Clear Cell Value in" for each column on a row when a date is reached..

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Is there a better (and efficient) way you found that works better?

Antonie B

Hi Neil,

This is great question, and there are multiple options. If you use the native options, you can set this up on a manual trigger or via a date recurrence workflow, i.e. everyday at 8am.

I normally base this decision on whether or not Bridge is involved already. While you can use both in a hybrid workflow, I find that Bridge is way more efficient and will be faster and may cause some issues. So if Bridge is active, I just build it as part of the workflow.

But if it can be achieved using native workflows, I would say it would be easier to maintain on the sheet itself.

One thing to note about using sheet automations is that you can't delete a row; you can only remove cell values. However, the API allows you to remove the actual row.