Emailing specific collaborators when forms are submitted via automations

[Shauna_Renee]

I’m having issues with an automation. There are two collaborators. Their client’s submit forms every week. They would like to get an email when the forms are submitted.

They only want to get notified of the forms they are assigned to as a collaborator. This is where I’m running into problems.

What I’ve tried:

I’ve tried setting up one automation that’s triggered when a form is submitted and inserting data from the previous action to get the email from the collaborator in the “to” field. It doesn’t pull their email. I get an error saying “the to field is empty”.

Then I tried creating a different automation for each collaborator that would trigger when a form is submitted.

I used the “find record” action and added a condition to filter the collaborator. This time I typed out the email in the to field.

However, when I submitted two different forms assigned to two different collaborators, the automation for Collaborator A ran and sent an email for a form that had already been submitted.

I thought the “find records” action would only find records from the previous step in the automation but that’s not what happened.

Is it possible to notify specific collaborators when a form they have been assigned to gets submitted?

[Michelle_Flitcr]

Hey Shauna!

I’m happy to report it is possible to notify specific collaborators when a form they have been assigned to gets submitted and you wouldn’t need to use an automation!

When you customize the Collaborator field type, there is a toggle that states “notify Collaborator when added” and this will email them and alert them in Airtable that they have been added to a record with a link to see.

However, this is also possible in automations but you wouldn’t need to leverage the Find Records step and would just need to add a Create Time field in your table. This is how I would set it up for each collaborator:
Trigger: When record matches conditions - conditions is when Collaborator field is [specific collaborator] and Created Time = today (to ensure updated records don’t trigger the automation)
Action: Send email - plug in the collaborator email and then dynamically bring in the additional values that you’d like!

Hope this helps but happy to go into this further if you don’t like these options! :crossed_fingers:

Best,
Michelle

[Shauna_Renee]

Thank you so much!! They are in a different time zone so the form I just tested doesn’t necessarily show today’s date so when I test the automation, it’s not showing “today”, It’s showing tomorrow.

I understand the automation, but can you explain what you mean by “notify collaborator when added”? I thought that only sent them an email when they are assigned to something and not when a form is submitted. I would prefer that option if possible!

[Shauna_Renee]

Ok I just tried it again but it’s not working. I submitted a form and set up the automation as you suggested, but it’s not letting me test the first part of the automation.

[Michelle_Flitcr]

Automation testing will only work if there is an existing record in the table that matches the conditions. I would try to test again after creating a test record with the collaborator tagged in the appropriate field.

[Michelle_Flitcr]

Shauna_Renee:

I understand the automation, but can you explain what you mean by “notify collaborator when added”? I thought that only sent them an email when they are assigned to something and not when a form is submitted. I would prefer that option if possible!

apologies as I saw your last comment first! But you are correct in that it will notify them when assigned in a standard grid view, but it should also notify them if they were selected as the Collaborator in the form and then the form was submitted.

[Shauna_Renee]

Yes, the collaborator is assigned and I submitted it so the correct date would register so I’m not sure why it’s not letting me test the automation.