Automate email digests with 3 new features 🚀

[Jason]

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 you’ll find a shorter summary of each new feature.

At a scheduled time trigger

The “At a scheduled time” 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

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

This new feature lets you use the records found in the “find records” 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.

[Jason]

Hi @Mariusz_S,

I’ll check with our engineers about this and let you know when I learn more.

[Sara_Ma]

This is an amazing addition!

I have a question though, is there a way to add multiple grids and filter the content of the grids by one of the columns?

[Jason]

Sara_Ma:

is there a way to add multiple grids and filter the content of the grids by one of the columns?

There is a way to do this! Start by adding a second “Find records” action to your automation flow. For each individual “Find records” action you can set different filter criteria (just like for a view) to only find records that match your filter conditions.

Then, you can insert records as a grid using each of these separately. Here’s how that might look when using the “Send email” action. Notice that each HTML grid is using a different “Find records” action step from above.

Then, run a test to make sure the right records are being displayed. Here’s an example of two grids in a received email.

Hope that helps Sara!

[Sara_Ma]

That is perfect, thank you so much!

One follow up, is it possible to sort the grid by a specific column variable?

[Jason]

You’re welcome! Right now there isn’t a way to set a custom sorting criteria, but that is something our team is considering for future enhancement.

[Team_Upbuild]

I agree it would be great to have a custom sorting feature for the grid. Also, is there a fix in the works for the number fields coming in without decimals? Thank you!

[Jason]

@Team_Upbuild There is a fix coming soon for number fields formatting properly with decimals

[MattWeber]

Can this be used to send specific digests to different people? I.e. the operation finds six pending items, but three for one person and three for another person. Can the digest send specific digests to each person for only their pending items?

[Jason]

MattWeber:

Can the digest send specific digests to each person for only their pending items?

It can be setup that way, but you would need to create a separate set of “Find records” and “Send email” actions for each person. That’d be easy to setup for a few people, but might become unmanageable for more than that.

Here’s an example of how the steps would be setup:

[Heracles]

@Jason That’s great improvements! Is it possible to sort the records somehow?
When choosing the Grid view it also becomes impossible to create a URL to the record directly, unless I am missing a workaround.

PS: I can’t seem to find a way to edit the insert record module, I am assuming that is not available yet.