Send email when Linked field is updated – with ONLY the new update

[justinjtessier]

I'd like to send an email to a user when a Linked field is updated, but ONLY send the new updates, not the entire contents of the field.

I'm working on a job board. I want to email the organization that posted the job every time a new applicant applies to their posting.

I have two Tables – Users and Job Postings. The two fields are linked so that each Job record shows the Users that have applied to the job, and each User record shows the Jobs they have applied to.

It seems like I can only email the ENTIRE "Users" field to the job poster through the automations creator. Ideally, I would send a daily email to the job poster with only the NEW profiles that have applied to the job.

Any help here is appreciated!

[Sara]

Hi, reading your question, I was thinking about creating a column for when the row is created and setting up the automation with the conditional field including the time as a condition like = yesterday.

I don't know if it does make sense. Let me know if you have any question 🙂

[justinjtessier]

Thanks for your reply, Sara - the problem is, a new row/record is not created in this case. Both records already exist, I only want to send an email when two records are newly linked.

[Sara]

Okay, I created a clock column to manage the hour when the mail should be send, so the email will be send everytime it mets those conditions: - clock:15 , description : not empty and last modified : yesterday.

it is a solution a little messy, but it should work

[justinjtessier]

That works for sending the email at a certain time, but I want the email body to only list the new applicants to each job, not the entire list of applicants.

[Sistema_Aotearo]

Try this from a different angle. Instead of triggering the automation from the "Job" table, trigger it from the "Applicant" table. The trigger can be a "Date-modified" field that looks at the link field you created.

To find credentials from the "Job" table such as email addresses etc, you may have to create "look-up" fields.

With this set up, you can address the information of the applicant a whole lot easier since the trigger is coming from them and not the job in its entirety.

Let me know if this is helpful.

[TheTimeSavingCo · Accepted solution]

If I were you I would tackle this with a new table that connected 'Users' and 'Job Postings' called 'Applications' or something, and handle the relationship from that table instead; this is the most foolproof way to handle this I think

If not, your next best bet is to do this with a new field that'll contain the "history" of each user's 'Job Postings' linked field, and you'd use a script to compare the two fields to see what's new and then email the organizations as needed

And the last option is to use a bunch of formula fields to replace the script.  This would be...pretty tedious and also could malfunction depending on the unique-ness of organization names, special characters in the names, and so forth.  I would not recommend doing this even though it's plausible

[justinjtessier]

I hadn't thought about approaching it from the "Job" table – I'm looking into that approach right now and how it can be helpful.

But besides that, I'm still running into an issue isolating only the applicants who have applied to the job since the last email was sent out. Since doing more research, I actually don't know if it's possible without a junction table.

[justinjtessier]

Thanks – I think the junction table is the answer here. That way I can split out each job application into its own record on a table, then use Views and filters to achieve the list I'm going for.