View a step’s metadata in pipeline

When you build a pipeline in Quickbase, you add steps to create a workflow. Each step can be configured using values from earlier steps—like choosing fields or using data that was exported from a previous step.

When the Pipeline runs, each step may return extra information from the system it connects to, called metadata. Access metadata from earlier steps by selecting it from the Quick reference widget and dropdown selectors, or by using the Jinja: metadata.<step-index>.

This article shows how to reference this metadata, and how it can be useful for processing bulk events.

Reference metadata in a step

To reference data when configuring a step:

• Enter plain values
• Use the dropdown selector or quick reference widget to select data exported from previous steps
• Use Jinja expressions

This example shows pipeline fields configured in those different ways:

1. Plain value—To addresses
2. References selected from the dropdown selector or quick reference widget—Subject
3. Jinja (using Jinja2 templating v2.11.3)—Body

When the pipeline runs, the metadata returned by each step is shown in the quick reference widget:

To reference metadata from a previous step in your pipeline, select it from the dropdown selector or quick reference widget, or use Jinja.

Bulk operations and loops

Some steps, like Bulk trigger and query steps, return an array of data. These steps produce batch metadata, like the size of the array of items returned.

This metadata may be useful when processing an array using a loop. When iterating over each record within the loop, the loop body alters the source step specified in the For each dropdown as follows:

• The source step index (e.g. a) references each item from the array that the loop iterates over
• The source step metadata is accessible with metadata.a, allowing for metadata.a.batch.size to be used within the loop body
• The source step metadata metadata.a.loop.index, tells you the current item's position in the loop (starting from 0)