Delay email automations until after the weekend

[at-com]

Hi all,

I have an automations question that I hope someone can help me with.

My company provides a programming service for clients. As we process the information received, Airtable sends an automatic email to the client letting them know what information we have and what we still need.

When record is updated, send email to client.

This is fairly simple and works well, however, we have employees who work at night or over weekends and do not  want emails going out to clients at funny times. Setting up the automation to trigger at a schedule time does not work because then I do not have the option of formatting the email based on specific record conditions. I would love to be able to have something check if it's during regular work hours, if so send the email, and if not, wait until the next regular business day and then send the email.

Any advice on how to implement this?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hm, what if you created a new field called "Email sent" or something, and the automation setup would be:
1. Trigger at a scheduled time 
2. "Find Record" step that meets the conditions you want and also "Email sent" is empty
3. Repeating group that sends an email per found record and updates the "Email sent" field to be "Done"  

[Sachin_191]

Hey @at-com 

Sounds like the goal is to delay email notifications from Airtable until regular work hours to prevent late or weekend emails to clients. Here’s how I'd approach it:

Using a combination of Airtable’s automation with a Make.com scenario, I’d set a “buffer” that checks if it’s business hours. If the condition isn’t met, the email automation is paused until the next workday. This allows you to retain email formatting based on specific record conditions while automating the timing to avoid off-hour emails.

[EddieROLM · Accepted solution]

Depending on whether multiple emails need to be sent, it might be better to reverse the flag. Instead of "Email sent" it could be "Send Email" so that if ✅ then send email and then uncheck after email has been sent.

[at-com]

Hi all,

Thank you for all the replies. In the end I created a field 'send email on next business day' that automatically gets checked when the requirements for the email are sent. I then did a scheduled email for every morning to email the clients whose checkboxes are checked off. The last step of the automation is to uncheck the box so they don't get the email again the next day.