Create Calendar Invites for multiple records via Automation

[mebaltes]

Hi all -

Airtable newbies here! 

I'm an ops manager supporting a team that has a ton of gates/deliverables. There are lots of dates (50+) and it is cyclical every 3-4 months. The team has told me it would be helpful if I created calendar invite reminders for their outlook calendar to keep them on track. I've already inputted all of the deliverables and dates into airtable and created some great calendar tools, but am having trouble creating the piece to bridge the gap to outlook calendar reminders.

I was able to create an automation tied to a button on an interface. However, I'm finding a few limitations to this and wondering if anyone has any great solves?

1. I have to press a button for each record/date individually. Is there a way to set an automation to apply to all records with certain conditions? (for example, add outlook reminders for all dates in X cycle?)

2. I can input a distro list for attendees but I would love if it looked up to a field of emails from a table and then used those.

Am I able to do #1 without running a script? I'm not at all familiar with scripts. or is there perhaps some other app or extension to solve this?

Thank you! 

[TheTimeSavingCo · Accepted solution]

re: I have to press a button for each record/date individually. Is there a way to set an automation to apply to all records with certain conditions? (for example, add outlook reminders for all dates in X cycle?)

If you're certain that there will be 100 or fewer records that need to have an invite sent out every time you click the button then we can do this without a script

Try giving the automation a 'Find Record' step, and then use a Repeating Group on the list of found records to send out one invite per found record.  The problem is that the 'Find Record' step only returns up to 100 records, thus my disclaimer above

You could potentially have it fully automated as well, so you wouldn't need to click the button in the interface?

Assuming you'd like the reminder to be sent 1 month before the deliverable date, you could try creating a formula field that would check whether the current date is 1 month before the deliverable date with a combination if "IS_SAME" and "DATEADD".  You could then use that formula field in an automation that would have the trigger "When record matches conditions", and the automation would run on its own

re: I can input a distro list for attendees but I would love if it looked up to a field of emails from a table and then used those.

Yeap this is doable.  You'd use a "Find Record" step to find the records with the emails you want, and then use those results for your email automation

[mebaltes]

Thank you so much! This seems to have worked. Hard to actually test it without it going fully live but i think this is good!