For work I would have to automate our airtable, we use it to log projects and each project has a different supervisor. Now i would have to automate the system to send automatic emails whenever something changes in the “row” of that specific supervisor. I tried this via the conditions trigger with:
WHEN supervisor is X
OR … basically every “column”
So that when something is updated for their project that specific person gets an email. However, this does not seem to work? As it only gives an update when only 1 field changes and not when for example 3 fields get updated accross multiple projects or even just 1?
How can I fix this?
I am looking forward to a response!
Thank you :slightly_smiling_face:
IF I understood you correctly, if you want to send a mail for every update in the row and not just for a specific field. you need “when record is updated”.
And in action field, in TO for mail you will put collaborator field so it will send mail to that specific person.
What I didn’t get what did you mean by
Maybe some more information / screenshot of your table setup could be helpful, do you have one table with projects and supervisors assigned to them , few connected tables with different information, does automation have to track changes only in one table or you want to track changes in multiple tables etc.
Without some additional info its kinda hard to give any definitive answer : :slightly_smiling_face:
First of all, thank you so much Marko for your response!
So to be more clear: In the 5th column (“verantwoordelijk…”) you can see the person that is responsible for every project (=every row, name of every project is listed in the first column). In some fields (like for example “url video”) this specific person (e.g. Celine) has to get an update via email if that field is updated. However other fields (for example: “eerste vers…”) get updated by an extern partner, and that extern partner has to get an update when that specific field has been updated. So for example: when Celine updates “eerste vers…” the extern partner has to get an email, and when the extern partner updates “url video”, Celine has to get an email. I tried to automate everything individually but I quickly reached the maximum of automations possible.
If you have external partners mail in row of the project you could solve this with 2 automation.
First will be “when the record is updated” , choose view you want (From screenshot i guess Grid), and then select set of specific fields you want automation to monitor (in this case pick fields that you want your supervisor to be notified about). And then in action part of automation in TO field for email put collaborator field (5th column in your case). This way whenever any of those fields change mail will be sent to person assigned to collaborator field in that specific row
Basically do the same thing in second automation, you just change the field automation monitors to those that your external partner needs to be notified, and in TO field you put email field of external partner.
This way you only need 2 automation, and you change who is emailed by changing collaborator field or field that contains email of your external partner on each project.
Only manual thing is that you would need to add external partners mail into the field for each project when you create it, or if you have a separate table with external partners you can use linked/lookup fields and just “assign” them similar to your supervisors.
Thank you for your quick response. However, when I want to put the collaborator field in the action part (“to” field), i can only put e-mail addresses. I don’t know if I do something wrong? I also tried clicking on the “+” at the end of the action-e-mail field, but with no success.
Automations that require complex business logic are difficult to do with a no-code approach. This is precisely why Airtable went to great lengths to include the ability to insert script actions into your automation workflows.
Mapping specific fields into email actions are extremely constraining. Ideally, you need to be able to conditionally choose content from the fields that matter given a specific context which may be the outcome of some tests. I try to avoid such direct mappings and create an abstraction between actual fields and the information that needs to reach stakeholders in the process.
In this text you have begun to expose the business rules for this process which need to be codified and by “codified” I mean - literally code that performs this logic whenever anything in the record changes. In situations like this, I recommend a simple diagram to ensure you fully embrace all possible routes of the automation process.
Once the code has determined the next action (if any), it will need to output certain values based on the conditions the logic has concluded. There is a mechanism in Script Actions to do this - output.set(name,value).
The name could be something like “targetEmailAddress”, whereas, the value could be an email address determined conditionally in the script logic. This makes it possible for a single email send step to fluidly change to send whatever the logic dictates.
In using this approach (i.e., a blend of no-code actions with a script action, you can build very complex processes in exactly one automation.
