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Automate email digests with 3 new features ๐Ÿš€

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Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

2b862daedc04fd36ef132dac5f543f6c4c717332

Hey community!

Today we are officially launching several brand new automation features to help you build more robust workflows.

  • Automation trigger: at a scheduled time
  • Automation action: find records
  • Rendering records as a list

One of the best applications for these new features is making an email digest, where you can schedule a time to send a list of records that match the conditions you set. To see how all of these features come together to build an email digest, see this support article.

Below youโ€™ll find a shorter summary of each new feature.

At a scheduled time trigger

trigger_options

The โ€œAt a scheduled timeโ€ trigger allows you to trigger (or run) an automation at a pre-designated date and time. You can choose to run at regular intervals (in hours or minutes) or at set time on specific days of the week.

Find records action

action_options

This action will look for records matching conditions that you can specify within the action settings. If a record that matches the conditions is found, you can add a following action that uses the record data to perform some other action.

Render records as a list

render_list
This new feature lets you use the records found in the โ€œfind recordsโ€ trigger and render them as a list within an email. You can select which fields to include, and render them as a list of records in the email.

Share your feedback

Our developers would love to hear your feedback around this feature, so feel free to comment in this topic with any questions or ideas on how we can improve.

64 Comments
Shrey_Banga
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Ah I see, thanks for the details. The reason you canโ€™t insert โ€œJOBSโ€ into the filter for the second Find Records is that itโ€™s coming from the output of the previous Find Records action, which outputs a list of records. So if the Find Records action outputs 3 records, you will end up with a list of the JOBS cell value taken from each record and combined into a list, e.g. ['job1', 'job2', 'job3']. The filter in the second Find Records expects a single string, so itโ€™s not allowing you to insert the list. We have plans to make it easier to convert from a list to a string, but in this case Iโ€™m not sure that will help either. It sounds like what you actually want is to find all records where SUBMITTED is OWNER ADDRESS CORRECTION and then loop over each record, then for each record find records in another table and take an action on those. This is not currently supported in automations because automations donโ€™t support loops, but you can do it with a scripting action.

Heracles
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Thatโ€™s a great step in the proper direction, as previous methods of creating digests with Zapier were hacky and unreliable.

Is sorting in the roadmap? The current order appears to be record creation which really makes no sense for task-keeping use cases.

A nice feature would be to inherit filters & sorting from specified views.

SergioCodes
8 - Airtable Astronomer
8 - Airtable Astronomer

Hey @Shrey_Banga

But the filter from Find Records doesnยดt work also with a โ€œsingle stringโ€ I tried using a formula and a rollup (with concatenate); those fields arenยดt a list (array), but it doesnยดt give me the option to include them as a filter.

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Alyssa_Buchthal
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

This is amazing! Will there be different time intervals coming available soon? (Namely being able to send something once or twice a month rather than on a weekly basis).

Also, have you considered adding the option to send all records in a view rather than needing to use the find records function to send a list of records? Having that available as an action would let me transfer my current digest system over from Zapier, which would be awesome.

Harold
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Also would be great if we could use bullets to sum up the records in the digest, with sub bullets for their details.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Hey @Alyssa_Buchthal! I canโ€™t speak to new time intervals coming soon, but weโ€™ll definitely update the community if we do release them in the future.

As for a way to send records in a view, are you more interested in sending records that are more formatted like the grid view? Thatโ€™s something weโ€™re actively looking into so I wanted to see if that would fit what you had in mind.

Alyssa_Buchthal
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Yeah! Currently I have an email digest that Iโ€™m using Zapier to send. Thereโ€™s a list of people it might be sent to and with Zapier I filter by each person so their relevant records are in one single view, and then send a digest of that view on a set time basis. I could also use the peopleโ€™s names as a field and then use logic paths to direct records to one digest or another based off of that field as a filter. It would be great if, rather than setting up 3 automations in AT, I could use logic paths within a single automation, or use a time trigger to send a digest of each view on a set basis.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Ah that makes sense @Alyssa_Buchthal. What weโ€™re working towads wouldnโ€™t exactly fit the need you described, but would allow you to create a digest with more of a grid view (as opposed to the current vertical โ€œlistโ€ view).

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Hi everyone,

We just released an update to the โ€œsend recordโ€ functionality - you can now send records as an HTML grid in addition to the previous โ€œlistโ€ format.

Hereโ€™s an example of what that could look like within an email:

render_as_grid

This new addition has just started rolling out across all of our customers, so it should be available to you soon. You may need to refresh your webpage to see it.

You can learn more about the new functionality in this support article.

Mariusz_S
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

This is BIG! Thank you!

Edit:
Just tested this new functionality and my formula fields (formatted as number) come in without decimal values?