I created an automation that sends an email (gmail) at the click of a button. It uses some fields + attachment to create the email:
Fields:
Email address
Subject
Body
Attachment
It works fine but it is very fragile: if one of those fields is empty, the email won’t work and the user won’t know.
I set a warning message when clicking the button, it helps, but I’d like something stronger; like during the automation, if any of those fields is empty, to show a popup or error message to the user.
I have looked around but cannot find anything like this. Any help?
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What if you created a single select field and got your automation to update that field when the automation ran? And so the automation would run whenever the button is clicked, and it would have a conditional where:
If all the fields needed are filled in, send the email
If the required fields are not filled, update the select field with ‘ERROR’
And you could add more conditionals if you wanted the error message to be more specific
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You could also try to solve this before the button click too. Try creating a formula field that’ll output instructions to help the user. e.g. if the Email Address field is empty, the formula field would output ‘Set email address’ and have that field always displayed to the user
Hey TimeSaving, thanks for the tips, they are awesome!
I think both are good, but the second could actually save lot of time and headache. I will definitely try that out.
Continuing on that line, maybe I could set the ‘send’ button to work only if the “check field” displays an ‘all good’ message, is that feasible?
Hmm, this is a button in an Interface, right? The only thing we can really do for this is hide the button entirely if the fields aren’t fully filled in I think
As a weird workaround, maybe you could create two buttons?
Set button 1 to show up when the required fields aren’t filled in and have the label be ‘Missing data’, and clicking it would copy the link to the record or something. Then set button 2 to be hidden if any of those required fields aren’t filled in and only to show up when they’re all filled in, and this would be the button that sends out the email
That way the user will only ever be able to activate the automation when all the fields are filled in, and when they aren’t, they’ll still sort of understand what they need to do, does that make sense?
Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
im thinking of doing something hybrid:
a formula field that displays ‘all good’ if they are filled or what’s missing if they aren’t, and the send button to show up only when they are all filled.
I guess I’ll find the ‘appear/disappear’ settings for the button in the interface itself, when clicking the button, right? I’ve never seen that, will look into it.
thanks!
Yeap its label is ‘Visibility’, here’s a screenshot of it
Thanks! Yes I figured it was that, but my plan doesn’t include it’s functionality. anyway, I have done what you suggested and it’s actually working great: My formula field is showing a dynamic message with the details to fix and a conditional formatting. Plus, the automation will shoot an email to the assignee of the record, if the send button is accidentally pushed while not everything being in place.
thank you very much for your help, it made all the difference
