I have a flow that should update a notion database with an AskAi response. I am receiving the following error:
Notion Database Updater Failed!
Error with node input or parameter “Search Value”. An empty value was received.
Value must be defined.
Please double check your node inputs or parameters
A similar flow was completed correctly with google sheets so it seems to be something with the Notion input nodes themselves. One would think they should mirror column names as in sheets but they do not.
Hey @PolarVortex - The Search Value input is required on updater nodes (Google Sheet, Notion, Airtable, Monday.com, etc). The writer nodes work without the search value input as they’re adding new records in the database rather than updating existing ones.
Imagine you have a database of employees in a Notion Database like this:
Employee Database:
Column A (Employee ID)
Column B (Name)
Column C (Department)
Column D (Salary)
Let’s say you want to update an employee’s salary. In this case:
Search Column would be “Employee ID” (Column A) This is the column you’ll use to find the specific record you want to update. It’s typically a unique identifier.
Search Value would be something like “EMP001” This is the actual value you’re looking for in the search column to identify the correct row.
Here’s how it works in practice:
The database updater node will:
Look in Column A (search column: Employee ID)
Find the row where Employee ID = “EMP001” (search value)
Update the salary in Column D for that specific row
Now without the search value and search column, finding the row to update is not possible.
Understood and appreciate the prompt response. In this case the search value is a URL. The same URL output from the Notion DB Reader was used successfully by the AskAi node. Given that the AskAi node located the URL and was run successfully I don’t see why the search value would be missing. Am I missing something?
Thank you! The reason why the Notion DB Updater failed was because one of the URLs was empty. Since no search value was available the node errored out.
The Ask AI node still worked since it was wrapped in an 'Error Shield;. You can use the same concept and merge the AI & Notion Updater steps in a subflow and then wrap the entire subflow in an error shield. That way if the process fails for a single input (ie. due to empty URLs), it would skip the entire subflow process and move to the next input without halting the entire flow.