Re: AirTable Automations Are Breaking My Links

xavier_williams · ‎Oct 21, 2020

I have built an automation that fires off an email to a key stake holder with information found in different fields.
One of these fields contains a link. When the automation fires, the email is sent along with a slack notification.

The slack notifaction contains the same information the email should, BUT the link in the email is altered by the automation and the link in the slack message seemingly works.

The automation is grabbing the same URL from the same field. I am not sure why the URL is changes in the email but not the slack message.

To add additional information, the email is removing the under-scores from the URL and the Slack message is not.

Can anyone help?

Justin_Barrett · ‎Oct 23, 2020

I ran a quick test that confirmed this markdown connection. Apparently the field data is inserted before markdown processing occurs, so underscores that come from fields are viewed as italics highlight markers.

The way I got the second URL to pass through was by using a formula field that adds a backslash before each underscore. It was a longshot because backslashes are often used in strings to “escape” a character that should not be processed normally (e.g. quotes in strings), and sure enough it works to “escape” the underscores so that the markdown process ignores them. Here’s my formula:

SUBSTITUTE(URL, "_", "\_")

Insert that formula field in the email body, and it’ll work.

See Solution in Thread

Kamille_Parks · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Can you screenshot that portion of the Automation for both you Slack and Email steps?

xavier_williams · ‎Oct 21, 2020

xavier_williams · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Kamille_Parks · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Weird. It may have something to do with Email’s message field doing something weird with markdown formatting. Try doing [Link to doc](Record (Step 1: Trigger) | Field values | link to Doc).

If that doesn’t work try using the exact same text as your are in the Slack message.

Justin_Barrett · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Welcome to the community, @xavier_williams! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: What triggers the automation? My first reaction when automations contain incomplete information from a record is that the automation is firing in the middle of an update. However, if only the email is being affected and not the Slack message, that would seem to shoot down that theory, but I’m still curious to know what the trigger is.

xavier_williams · ‎Oct 21, 2020

I tried using the same text and it still is not work out for me. The slack message is sending the proper link. And the email is removing the under_scores from the link.

Kamille_Parks · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Did you try formatting the link as a markdown link using the (display text)[actual link] syntax?

xavier_williams · ‎Oct 21, 2020

How do I do that? Within the automation or within the table?

Kamille_Parks · ‎Oct 21, 2020

Within the automation. Precede the input from the trigger record with (some display text) and wrap the input value with square brackets. I’m not sure if that’ll work but it might be worth a shot.