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Delay email automation

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James_Carringto
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Does anybody have a good workaround for delaying email automations for (example) 10 minutes?

Our situation:

  • When a project goes over budget, an email is sent to the project manager

But:

  • the email will go immediately, which is a problem, because the project manager might simply be in the process of updating the record, and once he’s finished with his updates, the project might not actually be over budget. Therefore, we are getting tons of false notifications.

What’s needed:

  • Some sort of pause before the notification is sent out, where Airtable checks to see if the situation is still true for that record, before sending the notification.
22 Replies 22

thanks Justin.  I think I figured out the multiple field reference, but the automation is only firing sometimes. If a new entry in recorded in those fields (we submit through a "form" interface) the automation runs but if a modification is made in an existing entry, no email is sent.

 

So here's the formula I have

OR({Playlist Links},{Notes/Other Placement}, NOW() > DATEADD(LAST_MODIFIED_TIME({Playlist Links},{Notes/Other Placement}), 3, "minutes"))
 
With Playlist Links and Notes/Other Placement being the fields that are being monitored for changes.
 
In the automation I have

When a record matches conditions
If Automation Copy (this is the field where the formula exists) =1 and Artist_Release contains "Name"
 
Send an email

@TWarwick The problem that I see is that all of your logic is wrapped up in the OR() function. Here's why that's not doing what you want.

OR() will output True or False if any of its expressions is equivalent to true; in this case, any of those two fields being filled or the time comparison being true. The problem with this design is that as long as one of those two fields has data, the function will always output True, regardless of the time comparison. Most OR() function logic is designed to immediately return True the moment that it finds a single expression (sequentially, first to last) that is equivalent to True, and ignore the rest. Therefore, if either of those first two fields contains data, the function will return True and not even bother with the time comparison.

The reason that this always-True output is a problem is because fields used as automation triggers need to "reset"—output some value that does not meet the condition of the trigger—in order to trigger the same automation again later. In your case, the field needs to output False—or some false-equivalent value—to reset the trigger. However, if that OR() function always outputs true because either of those fields contain data, then it will never possibly output False until both of those fields are cleared, at which point the output would be based on the time comparison.

The way to make this work is to have the time comparison be the only thing driving the output value. You can still require those fields to be filled, but it just needs to be structured differently:

IF(
  OR({Playlist Links}, {Notes/Other Placement}),
  NOW() > DATEADD(
    LAST_MODIFIED_TIME({Playlist Links}, {Notes/Other Placement}), 3, "minutes"
  )
)

That formula basically reads like this: if either of those fields is filled, output True/False depending on whether the current time is 3 minutes past the most recent modified time of either field.

thanks very much Justin.  This worked!   Additionally, AT Support confirmed they requested this feature based on our community feedback.