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.

[PaulinoPo]

cool feature! thank you so much!

[Alex_Lerma1]

Yes. This was a feature (custom sorting) I was about to send an email to support as well before coming across this post. The other was custom grid sizing for certain columns. :crossed_fingers:t3: Thank you for your post, Jason! :+1:t3:

[Jason_F]

I love this feature, but I am struggling to figure out how the Grid or List is determining the order of the content.

When I select the fields I want them in an order that makes sense, but I can’t figure out how to reorder the columns to present the data the right way.

i.e. I want Meeting Date, Notes, ToDo but it is only rendering as Todo, Notes, Date

[Russell_Findlay]

We use this to send customer feedback as a weekly digest to the team

The problem is the text field with the comments in gets truncated in webmail and on mobile so you don’t get the full comment.

In outlook it reads fine.

Is there a way of me solving this - or is it an issue that needs resolving ?

This may be the equivalent to other people’s issues.

Thanks

[HeikeHoreth]

Hey,
is there a way to change the width of the html grid when it’s send by email. The current outcome is squished together and some columns are hard to read.

Thank you.

[Databaser]

Unfortunately, there is not. I checked this weekend with Airtable.

[Anna]

This is a great feature - thanks, Airtable! I would like to add my agreement with others’ comments that when using the grid option it would be awesome to be able to:

• Edit the selected fields after the initial creation
• Specify the column order
• Specify row sort parameters
• Group records (I tried the workaround suggested upthread, but the results were awkwardly formatted)

I know this isn’t how it’s currently engineered, but in some cases, what I really want is to have an existing table view (with its filters, sorting, and grouping) rendered in the body of the email. Obviously, I could just put the view link in the email, but it would be amazing to have the view there already, without the need to click through (which some people won’t do). Something to consider?

[Anna]

Oh, and one more thing - I’ve been asked to create a monthly digest, which I think is not currently available. This would be a nice added option!

[Adam_Minich]

Adam from Airtable here!

Our friends at product and engineering were able to push out a feature enhancement that allows folks to find records based on a view in your base. Additionally, in later action steps in your automation where there is an option to render the found records as a list or grid you can add an optional link back to the particular view where the listed records are coming from.

More details in our announcement here.

[Jordan_Gauger]

2nd Bump here, really need to mark records as ‘Sent in Digest’ but can’t Find Records and Update them, I get an error with multiple record IDs.