miles

let's say you have a series of inter-dependent columns designed to generate ONE output (a valid email, a competitor name formatted a specific way, the name of a product, a 300-column eric nowoslawski recency first-line, etc.). something modular and repeatable that you might just want to run on a whim for any given project. not something you should need to design or build from scratch every time.

how do i instance this with ease in any given table?

bad solution #1: save each individual column as a template. this really doesn't work because the relationship between those columns cannot be saved and the whole thing cannot be instanced with ease. you would have to create multiple enrichment columns, plug all the inputs, create run conditions/formulas, dirty up your table, etc.

bad solution #2: save as a table template. but as far as i know there is no easy way to concatenate a pre-existing table with another table's column structure. so if i'm working on Table A and decide i want to implement a specific Play saved as Table Template B...how do I do this without going through the process of:

app.clay.com home

duplicate Table B Template

copy data from Table A to Table B template

run enrichments

add Lookups to Table A.

bad solution #3: custom waterfalls. talked to support and apparently it is not possible to hook up inputs and outputs between modules inside of custom waterfalls so this functionality is just not possible afaik.

bad solution #4: hacking workbooks together, though tbf i have not tried this as i find the workbook functionality confusing in general. maybe there's a way to do this here that i'm not aware of?

any inter-dependent series of columns can be saved as one Meta-Column (essentially a single-purpose table with one output) which can be brought in as a singular column. all the internal inputs and outputs, run conditions, etc. are already established. essentially it acts as one custom Enrichment column module. if there are any required dependencies, these can be populated with columns in the original table the normal way.

if i'm in the middle of working on a table and it occurs to me that i need to pull google review snippets for all these gyms (multiple HTTP APIs -> AI -> formula, etc.), I can just instance that Meta-Column, give it the required inputs (e.g. website, location) and press play.

now, let's say you continue working in your table and notice some issues with the Meta-Column outputs. broken API or bad prompt. improvements. to edit the meta-column, you right click into it -> Edit Meta-Column and then you are brought into the meta-column view which is essentially just a table view where you can go into any of the columns and make any changes. save and exit and you are returned to the original table with the improved version of this meta-column as if you had edited a single column (stale data is stale, etc.).