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Dear all,

A person, completely zero at coding here. Please help!


Made a database for all the company’s contacts.

Have a date field “Birthday” which is in a Date format (but with an actual year of birth) (I dont have birthdays for all people by the way, so sometimes this field is empty)

Then used a formula (see below) to change the year of birth to the current one so I managed to create a calendar view for birthdays.

DATETIME_PARSE(

DATETIME_FORMAT(

Birthday,

‘MMMM D’

)&

’ '&

YEAR(

TODAY()

),

‘MMMM D YYYY’

)

But now I need to make an automation that would send an email to me if there is a birthday coming 2 days from now.

Ideally to look it like

Reminder! “Name Surname” has a birthday on “date of birthday”


I tried to use a trigger when “formule to calculate birthday” (it is a formula field) is within 2 days

and action “send an email”

But it doesnt seem to work: the automation only sees one person instead of several and doesnt seem to be able to collect the date of birth correctly.


If someone has performed a similat tast, can you help?


thank you so very much!

Maria

Hi @N_V - I think you are on the right lines here. You say “the automation only sees one person instead of several” - not sure what you mean here, but the automation is going to act on each record separately, so if you have two birthdays triggering the alert today, then you will get two emails, one for each record, not one email with both records.


With the email message, this is just a question of getting the combination of field values and static text right - it should all work OK. Here’s my example in the automation:



I would start by putting the dynamic field values in first on their own, i.e. person name and birthday, then testing out the automation. If this works OK, then go back and add whatever static text you want around the dynamic fields.

Hi @N_V - I think you are on the right lines here. You say “the automation only sees one person instead of several” - not sure what you mean here, but the automation is going to act on each record separately, so if you have two birthdays triggering the alert today, then you will get two emails, one for each record, not one email with both records.


With the email message, this is just a question of getting the combination of field values and static text right - it should all work OK. Here’s my example in the automation:



I would start by putting the dynamic field values in first on their own, i.e. person name and birthday, then testing out the automation. If this works OK, then go back and add whatever static text you want around the dynamic fields.


Dear @JonathanBowen thank you so much for the feedback!

I am trying to understand a bit how the automations work in general. Just to confirm:

if I put the algorithm of sending me an email 2 day before the actual birthday, it will run by itself and check records every day to find the matching records?

For instance today I see that there are two people in my database that will have their birthdays. So If I put the automation ON, tomorrow I should receive 2 emails with relevant records information, right? Without any additinal actions from my side? and then the automation will continue to “check” it every day?

Sorry I know this question seem a bit dilettante, but just wanted to make sure I get it right…

thank you again for your time!

Best,

Maria

I’m having a similar Problem to send out automative birthday emails, but am still struggling with the formula. I adapted the formula to send out mails on the birthday itself.

DATETIME_DIFF(DATETIME_FORMAT({Birthday},‘MM-DD’),DATETIME_FORMAT(TODAY(),‘MM-DD’),‘days’)


My problem (which is likely is also a problem here) is that TODAY() won’t update on its own. It stays the same for a while.

Is there a solution to that problem?

I’m using automations to send an email, once the computed difference hits 0.


Ah I just came um with a solution, that might circumvent that problem. I can compute the birthday

DATETIME_PARSE(DATETIME_FORMAT({Birthday},‘MM-DD’),‘MM-DD’)

and then check in the Automator for “today”. Lets see over the next day if this works and triggers automatic responses.

If nobody is logged into your system, the TODAY() function should update on its own every few hours. Nobody knows for sure how long it takes to update, but it should eventually update.

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