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Before I say anything else, Airtable is excellent.  Super awesome product.  That said, this problem is really holding us up.

I see I am not the first person to ask this question, but I am surprised that it's not resolved, and that such a basic feature is not already available when this question has been asked a couple of years ago.  Is there some reason that this cannot be easily added as a feature?  

  • Snag: Without sorting, the info in the email digest is useless.  An emailed grid could just be sorted, or just use any view created in the base or interfaces.  This would seem like an easy feature to add given the entire platform is based on table data.  I do realize things can be complex in programming even for something simple.  Is this feature coming though?  It makes or breaks the email digest concept for us.  I am guessing we're not the only ones who could benefit.  

In all my views I have a table that is sorted and understandable.  In the weekly email digest automation below there is no sorting which makes it unusable because you have to jump all around the table to match up information.  Sorting is so important everywhere else to us, and that extends to the emails we send out...

Can anyone @dashler78 provide any insight to let us know how to plan for the use of weekly email digests moving forward?

Thank you! 😃

 

Indeed, the Automation Find records action is not sortable when searching by condition.
If the "Find records based on" is set to "View", then the records can be displayed in the sort set in the view.

Indeed, the Automation Find records action is not sortable when searching by condition.
If the "Find records based on" is set to "View", then the records can be displayed in the sort set in the view.


Sho, this is a very good response.  Thank you.  Took me a minute to figure out how to implement it this way, but it does work.

For anyone else trying to accomplish this, what I did was...

  1. Under "Automations > Suggested for you" I clicked "Send a weekly digest."  At first I tried to convert the existing automation I had already created but it didn't work as I expected so I started from scratch.
  2. I picked the frequency in step 1 (The trigger)
  3. I click on step 2 actions (Find records) and like Sho said above, I chose the table and Find records based on "View"
  4. Then I had to backtrack because I realized I didn't have the "view" that I wanted to have emailed out already created.
  5. So, I went back to the "Data" tab and duplicated my main grid view.  
  6. Then in the duplicated one, I renamed it and I used filters, hide fields, sort, etc. to create a grid that only showed the information that I wanted to email out.
  7. That done, I went back to the new weekly digest automation I was creating (btw I have these open in separate tabs so I can jump back and forth).  In the "Find records > View" dropdown, I selected the new grid view I just created in the Data tab, and voila!  
  8. Last, in my outgoing email, I switched it from List View to Grid View, and it worked out great.

In the end, I'd venture to say that this is an even better solution that adding filtering to the other method.  Using this method, you have better control over what is sent out and it's easier to modify.

Thanks again, to Sho.  Hopefully this is helpful to some!

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