Best way to trigger a 1 hour before date & time reminder

[jennys_systems]

I'm trying to set up an automation where 1 hour before a call date & time, sends an email to remind the person.

I've tried creating a column to have a formula that is the date & time matches now - mark as "SEND NOTIFICATION" but this doesn't seem to work properly. I don't know if this is because the time is in PST and I'm in GMT.

But does anyone cleverer at this than me help with a simple solution.

Thank you!

[Eric_L]

Seems like you're on the right path with your solution! There are many ways to do what you want, and creating a formula column that is "data&time matches now" is close to something you want. I would create 2 columns and an automation:

• Ready for notification column that has a formula that will return 1 or 0 depending on whether it's time for a notification (in your case, call time - 1h < now)
• Notification Sent date column that is empty until this automation runs:
• When "Ready for notification" becomes 1, send notification and update "Notification Sent" to now (which would be when the automation was triggered)

Does that make sense?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

I've tried creating a column to have a formula that is the date & time matches now - mark as "SEND NOTIFICATION" but this doesn't seem to work properly. I don't know if this is because the time is in PST and I'm in GMT.

What's the formula you're using for this? 

NOW() updates pretty sporadically when the base is closed: https://support.airtable.com/docs/formula-field-reference

As such, getting it to send one hour is a pretty tricky proposition.  Simplest way might be using an automation that triggers once an hour that looks for calls within the next hour?  You'd use a formula field to identify said calls, probably with like IS_SAME or something.  It'd use up 720 automation runs a month though