Automate email digests with 3 new features 🚀

I agree it would be great to have a custom sorting feature for the grid. Also, is there a fix in the works for the number fields coming in without decimals? Thank you!

@Team_Upbuild There is a fix coming soon for number fields formatting properly with decimals

Can this be used to send specific digests to different people? I.e. the operation finds six pending items, but three for one person and three for another person. Can the digest send specific digests to each person for only their pending items?

It can be setup that way, but you would need to create a separate set of “Find records” and “Send email” actions for each person. That’d be easy to setup for a few people, but might become unmanageable for more than that.

Here’s an example of how the steps would be setup:

@Jason That’s great improvements! Is it possible to sort the records somehow?
When choosing the Grid view it also becomes impossible to create a URL to the record directly, unless I am missing a workaround.

PS: I can’t seem to find a way to edit the insert record module, I am assuming that is not available yet.

@Jason , Thank You so much for these amazing features, it’s way neat and reliable than Zapier email digest process.

I have one concern though, If I am setting up my trigger to push every day at 10:00 am with the conditional set up to find these records. Sometimes there are no matching records but still, it triggers the email with empty records?
There should be a must-stop to trigger this email if there are no matching records at this day and time
What do you think about that?

Thanks for your time
Ahmed

• 1! Just emailed support for this. Getting this feedback from multiple customers.

Also: being able to “find records” + update them would be a huge step forwards.

Back when automations were first introduced last year, there was a teaser comment made by one of the devs on Twitter indicating that conditional logic for automations was also in the works. It would be an easy way to solve your problem, but we’re still waiting for it.

I love being able to send automated email digests, but please strongly consider implementing the sorting sooner rather than later. :pray:t2:

The purpose of the “grid” is to include multiple records, but without a way to sort the information for the reader, it’s almost useless and doesn’t look professional to them. My grid has appointment dates, but the records and dates are all scattered in a random order which makes readers confused.

Thanks for this awesome feature! Unfortunately, using the “Render HTML as Grid” leaves a little bit to be desired since it truncates text & isn’t totally responsive (I’m not sure if that’s possible w/ email anyways, just saying!). That is literally my only complaint about this!

I have a base where sometimes the “find records” action returns no records.
Therefore the email digest automation fails.
As I understand there’s no fallback option at the moment if that happens?

Edit:

Hi @Jason, is there a way you could add a fallback option?
An alternative would be for me to switch off notifications when the automation fails but that’s not an option either :frowning:

Nope, unfortunately.

Loving this new feature, but I’m seeing some really wonky formatting when sending the grid through Airtable’s “Send Email” action.

Anyone else seeing this behavior?

Hi! So excited to use this feature!

I am experiencing an issue with some fields not populating. This happened for two different fields I added to the grid. One was a “Record Url” field and the other is a single line field (see picture).

Is anyone else experiencing this? I feel like I am setting up everything right, but I really want to get this cruising for my team…so I’m hoping it’s something I did wrong that I can fix quickly!

Thanks!!

airtable-support-grid-digest|614x500

maybe try a long text field instead of a single line?

Yes. This was a feature (custom sorting) I was about to send an email to support as well before coming across this post. The other was custom grid sizing for certain columns. :crossed_fingers:t3: Thank you for your post, Jason! :+1:t3:

I love this feature, but I am struggling to figure out how the Grid or List is determining the order of the content.

When I select the fields I want them in an order that makes sense, but I can’t figure out how to reorder the columns to present the data the right way.

i.e. I want Meeting Date, Notes, ToDo but it is only rendering as Todo, Notes, Date

We use this to send customer feedback as a weekly digest to the team

The problem is the text field with the comments in gets truncated in webmail and on mobile so you don’t get the full comment.

In outlook it reads fine.

Is there a way of me solving this - or is it an issue that needs resolving ?

This may be the equivalent to other people’s issues.

Thanks

Hey,
is there a way to change the width of the html grid when it’s send by email. The current outcome is squished together and some columns are hard to read.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, there is not. I checked this weekend with Airtable.

This is a great feature - thanks, Airtable! I would like to add my agreement with others’ comments that when using the grid option it would be awesome to be able to:

• Edit the selected fields after the initial creation
• Specify the column order
• Specify row sort parameters
• Group records (I tried the workaround suggested upthread, but the results were awkwardly formatted)

I know this isn’t how it’s currently engineered, but in some cases, what I really want is to have an existing table view (with its filters, sorting, and grouping) rendered in the body of the email. Obviously, I could just put the view link in the email, but it would be amazing to have the view there already, without the need to click through (which some people won’t do). Something to consider?

Oh, and one more thing - I’ve been asked to create a monthly digest, which I think is not currently available. This would be a nice added option!

Adam from Airtable here!

Our friends at product and engineering were able to push out a feature enhancement that allows folks to find records based on a view in your base. Additionally, in later action steps in your automation where there is an option to render the found records as a list or grid you can add an optional link back to the particular view where the listed records are coming from.

More details in our announcement here.

2nd Bump here, really need to mark records as ‘Sent in Digest’ but can’t Find Records and Update them, I get an error with multiple record IDs.

Also waiting for this one!