Sending an Automated email when a new record is received the To field confusing me

I would switch your trigger to “when a form is submitted”.

Otherwise, your automation will ALSO trigger whenever you create a new record in your base through any other method.

When this happens, the automation will trigger too soon because it will trigger as soon as the empty record is created… before you’ve had a chance to enter any information into the record.

Also, make sure that you’re using an email field on your form to collect the email address.

p.s. Note that Airtable gives you a “validate email” option to make sure that the person typed in the proper formatting of a  a valid email address, but if you need more advanced email validation — such as making sure that the email address actually exists or making sure that the person is submitting their own email address instead of someone else’s — then you would need to use Fillout for its advanced email validation options. (If you switch to Fillout, then you’ll want to change back your Airtable automation trigger to “when a record is created”… or you can use Fillout’s built-in workflows to send your email from there instead of Airtable.)

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Hi,

I agree that using ‘when a form is submitted’ is better in your case
Also, it seems like you selected ‘Base structure’, don't do that.

Use data from ‘When a record created’ - Insert value from field. 
Or ‘When a form is submitted’ - they are almost similar.
 

Hmm, how are you determining their email address from their member ID?  Assuming you’re asking them to fill it in, then like Alexey mentioned, don’t use ‘Base structure’, instead use the actual values of the fields:

If you’re not asking them to fill it in and you have a ‘Members’ table that has these IDs and their email addresses then you’ll need to add a ‘Find record’ step to get that person’s email and I’ve set it up here for you to check out

Members table:

Submissions:

And this is how the automation would look.  The idea is if it finds a single member record then it’ll email them, and if not it should notify you that there was an issue

I’ve written a detailed article on how to send a confirmation email after a form is submitted. Check it out.

Taha, Airtable Advisor

Thank you for all the advice extremely informative and helpful. ​@TheTimeSavingCo , ​@ScottWorld, ​@Taha-Jiruwala, ​@Alexey_Gusev  Thank you for your continued support over many subjects you have assisted me with