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I’m having trouble with an automation I created to notify other team members when a long-text field is updated on a record. Edits to the field generate multiple emails instead of only one. How can I get the automation to send only one email with the complete update?


The same issue is documented here, but the thread is closed and I can’t see the solution anywhere.


Thank you!

I’m the guy who posted that earlier question – same as the question you have now. I clicked back to it and I see that it’s closed because (it claims) the issue was resolved. I don’t recall the issue being resolved.


I just looked at this again. I came up with a kind of workaround:



  1. Create a date+time field called (say) “Update Sent”.

  2. Configure the first step of the automation so it is triggered when THAT field has been modified/updated.

  3. Have the automation send an email (with whatever content you want).


Now the way it works is, user clicks into the Update Sent field, gets a calendar dropdown and clicks the “Today” button. That enters the current date/time (so you now have a record of when the update email was sent). And because clicking into a date/time field like this and selecting “Today” is a single event (unlike typing a bunch of letters), the field is only updated once, and thus only 1 email will be sent.


Of course this isn’t perfectly satisfactory. The email part is automated, but the triggering part isn’t. So user has to know to click on that field and update it by clicking ‘Today’. No change in that field, no email. The other reason this isn’t super satisfactory is that it’s possible for somebody to trigger the sending of an email without actually changing the record.*


By the way, I thought perhaps I could finesse the problem by editing the trigger field in a form. Web form, maybe (didn’t try that). But a normal Airtable data-entry form (what you get when you hit spacebar with a record selected), nope. Still sends multiple emails.


William

Hey All,


I’m also looking to sort out the same issue! so following this post.

I’m the guy who posted that earlier question – same as the question you have now. I clicked back to it and I see that it’s closed because (it claims) the issue was resolved. I don’t recall the issue being resolved.


I just looked at this again. I came up with a kind of workaround:



  1. Create a date+time field called (say) “Update Sent”.

  2. Configure the first step of the automation so it is triggered when THAT field has been modified/updated.

  3. Have the automation send an email (with whatever content you want).


Now the way it works is, user clicks into the Update Sent field, gets a calendar dropdown and clicks the “Today” button. That enters the current date/time (so you now have a record of when the update email was sent). And because clicking into a date/time field like this and selecting “Today” is a single event (unlike typing a bunch of letters), the field is only updated once, and thus only 1 email will be sent.


Of course this isn’t perfectly satisfactory. The email part is automated, but the triggering part isn’t. So user has to know to click on that field and update it by clicking ‘Today’. No change in that field, no email. The other reason this isn’t super satisfactory is that it’s possible for somebody to trigger the sending of an email without actually changing the record.*


By the way, I thought perhaps I could finesse the problem by editing the trigger field in a form. Web form, maybe (didn’t try that). But a normal Airtable data-entry form (what you get when you hit spacebar with a record selected), nope. Still sends multiple emails.


William


I also tried to use the “when record enters a view” trigger and created a view to accommodate when the field is not empty… same result, if actually sends the first letter of the text in the row and that’s all…

Following. Same issue.

Following. Same issue.


Hey @Angel_Clark, you could:



  1. Set up a Last Modified Time field to track the long text field in question

  2. Set up a formula field to check whether it’s 5 minutes after the date time value from the above Last Modified Time field

  3. Make the automation trigger off of that


The downside is that your automation might run anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour or two later, so if you need emails to be sent out quickly this might not work for you though

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