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Please help: How can I send automated birthday emails to the members of my organisation?

  • September 6, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 106 views
B
  • BAP
  • New Participant

Hello:)

I am very new to Airtable and am having a hard time figuring this out on my own.
I have a data base on Airtable where I have over 200 members of the organisation I work in with their emails and dates of birth. Now I want to create an automation, that is triggered on the members birthdays, sending them a ‘Happy Birthday’ Email without me having to look after it regularly. Does anybody know how this works and could maybe help me out? Best in a very easy way to understand because as said above - I am very new to all of this… :slightly_smiling_face:
Thank you in advance.

Franzi

3 replies

J
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  • Joseph_Abraham
  • Participating Frequently
  • September 6, 2021

There are many different ways to achieve this, so I’m sure you’ll get different answers. Here is how I would accomplish this using Airtable’s automations.

First, we need to get the person’s birthday in the current year from their DOB. For example, if their DOB is 9/6/1974, we need a date of 9/6/2021 to see if their birthday is today. Create a new column ( I called mine Birthday (Current Year)) and use this formula:

DATETIME_PARSE(MONTH(DOB)&"/"&DAY(DOB)&"/"&YEAR(TODAY()), 'MM/DD/YYYY')

Replace “DOB” with whatever your dates of birth column is named. This formula is creating a new date from the month of the date of birth, the day of their date of birth, and the current year. It’s a good idea to create a couple test records in your table that have a birthday of today, so you can see how this works before turning on the automation.

Now we can set up an automation. Create a new automation and select “When record matches conditions” as the trigger. Select the table where your records are and create a new condition that reads “When Birthday (Current Year) is today”. Make sure you click run test after this step.

Next, select “Send email” as the action. Click the plus icon in the “To” field and insert the Email field from the record it grabbed when you clicked run test. Now you can fill out the subject and message fields with whatever you want. Use markdown to format the message if desired, and use the Preview email button to make sure it looks right.

Once everything is ready to go, don’t forget to turn on your automation.

Justin_Barrett
B
  • BAP
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • September 6, 2021

There are many different ways to achieve this, so I’m sure you’ll get different answers. Here is how I would accomplish this using Airtable’s automations.

First, we need to get the person’s birthday in the current year from their DOB. For example, if their DOB is 9/6/1974, we need a date of 9/6/2021 to see if their birthday is today. Create a new column ( I called mine Birthday (Current Year)) and use this formula:

DATETIME_PARSE(MONTH(DOB)&"/"&DAY(DOB)&"/"&YEAR(TODAY()), 'MM/DD/YYYY')

Replace “DOB” with whatever your dates of birth column is named. This formula is creating a new date from the month of the date of birth, the day of their date of birth, and the current year. It’s a good idea to create a couple test records in your table that have a birthday of today, so you can see how this works before turning on the automation.

Now we can set up an automation. Create a new automation and select “When record matches conditions” as the trigger. Select the table where your records are and create a new condition that reads “When Birthday (Current Year) is today”. Make sure you click run test after this step.

Next, select “Send email” as the action. Click the plus icon in the “To” field and insert the Email field from the record it grabbed when you clicked run test. Now you can fill out the subject and message fields with whatever you want. Use markdown to format the message if desired, and use the Preview email button to make sure it looks right.

Once everything is ready to go, don’t forget to turn on your automation.


You are amazing! Thank you so so much for answering so fast and helping me out. I will try it tomorrow and see if it works but I already read it now and it was very understandable! Thanks again… :slightly_smiling_face: :sunflower:

J
B
  • BAP
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • September 8, 2021

There are many different ways to achieve this, so I’m sure you’ll get different answers. Here is how I would accomplish this using Airtable’s automations.

First, we need to get the person’s birthday in the current year from their DOB. For example, if their DOB is 9/6/1974, we need a date of 9/6/2021 to see if their birthday is today. Create a new column ( I called mine Birthday (Current Year)) and use this formula:

DATETIME_PARSE(MONTH(DOB)&"/"&DAY(DOB)&"/"&YEAR(TODAY()), 'MM/DD/YYYY')

Replace “DOB” with whatever your dates of birth column is named. This formula is creating a new date from the month of the date of birth, the day of their date of birth, and the current year. It’s a good idea to create a couple test records in your table that have a birthday of today, so you can see how this works before turning on the automation.

Now we can set up an automation. Create a new automation and select “When record matches conditions” as the trigger. Select the table where your records are and create a new condition that reads “When Birthday (Current Year) is today”. Make sure you click run test after this step.

Next, select “Send email” as the action. Click the plus icon in the “To” field and insert the Email field from the record it grabbed when you clicked run test. Now you can fill out the subject and message fields with whatever you want. Use markdown to format the message if desired, and use the Preview email button to make sure it looks right.

Once everything is ready to go, don’t forget to turn on your automation.


Good morning Joseph,

so I tried it out now (I didn’t have time to do it yesterday) and I still have a few questions that I was hoping you could maybe answer… :slightly_smiling_face:
I created a new table with emails and dates of birth of my family and friends so I could try it out without maybe messing up the real table.
When I clicked ‘run test’ it only worked when there was a birthday in the records that was today. Why is that? If I want to create this automation with the other big table of my organisation will it only work when there’s a birthday of today?

Then, when I clicked ‘send email’ and ‘run test’ (I inserted my own email because I pretended it is my birthday in the records) it failed and said ‘cannot email non-collaborators on the current billing plan’. What can I do here?
And if I only insert the one email that pops up when I click ‘send email’ is the automation really for all the people in the table then? Will this work throughout the year?

I really hope you can understand my issues…I am not the best in describing them… :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

Thank you so much for your help! Really! And have a great day. :slightly_smiling_face:

Franzi

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