Automation Email - Pull PDF from another table?

[Leana_Siochi]

I’ve seen a couple of postings that sort of sound similar so apologies if this is elsewhere and I couldn’t find it!

I have a table, “Requests”, that is filled in by a form. When a new record comes in, an admin will review the submission and then check a box to trigger a welcome email. I’d like to be able to attach a PDF (always the same PDF) in the welcome email. I don’t want to pull this PDF from each record because that will eat away at our space (and because it’s always the same PDF), so I’ve placed this PDF in another table (called “Resources”) in the same base.

I’ve set up an automation that:

1. Triggers when an admin checks the “Send Welcome Email” box in the “Requests” table
2. Does a “Find Records” on the “Resources” table to find the attachment I want

But I think this method is failing because it sees it purely as a reference and not as the actual PDF. If I don’t want to use a third party app like Zapier, and I don’t want to embed a link to the PDF in the body of the email, is there any other way to resolve this?

Thanks!

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

The Find Records action is not designed for what you are trying to do with it.

Another option is to use a linked record field and a lookup of the attachment field. All of the records would need to link to the single record with the set attachment. This creates its own set of complications because you would need an automation to create the link before you send the email. I do not think that it could be a prior action in the same automation as the email, because the data from the triggering record would be the old data, as the record was a trigger time, not the updated data with the linked record.

[Leana_Siochi]

Hi Kuovonne - it has its own complications but definitely something I can play around with! Thanks for the fast response!

[Leana_Siochi]

Seems to work ok when I have an automation set to trigger on new record creation and to fill in the “Resources” link with the name of the record I want from the other table. Then I set my welcome email not to fire until both the check mark and the attachment fields are filled in. This will work for now - thanks again!