Send email with different content to each record

[Walid_Belahmer]

Hey folks :wave:

I want to run this automation :point_down:

When: trigger t

Action 1:
Find record from Table T
Table T has 2 fields:
Email field and text field

Then Action 2:
Send email:
To: email field from action 1
Text: text field from action 1

THE PROBLEM: :point_down:

When action 1 retrieves multiple records from Table T like this:

Record 1:
Text field 1, email 1
Record 2:
Text Field 2, email 2
…
Record n:
Text Field n, email n

Result: :point_down:

ONE email only is sent as follows:
To: email 1, email 2…email n
Text: text field 1 text field 2 … text field n
:point_right: all concatenated in the same email body.

Which makes no sense in the scenario I want to accomplish, since each recipient needs to receive an email with the personalized text taken from text field n from its corresponding record from Table T.

Instead, I need airtable to do the following while performing action 2: :point_down:

Send text field 1 to email 1

Send text field 2 to email 2

…

Send text field n to email n

Any idea how to achieve this? :face_with_monocle:

Thanks in advance.

[Justin_Barrett]

Welcome to the community, @Walid_Belahmer! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: You didn’t mention what you’re using for the automation trigger, but I’m guessing that it’s time-based in some fashion; i.e. it runs on a set schedule. The problem is that this forces the system to rely on the Find action to find records, but as you noticed, each found record can’t be treated separately.

The typical solution for this is to start by switching up the trigger to use “When record enters a view”. Each record that enters that view will trigger the automation separately from all others, and the automation will operate only on that record and whatever data it contains. The downside is that this will lead to a LOT of automation runs if you have a lot of records to process.

As for getting records to enter a view on a schedule, this could be done with a clever formula that only outputs a specific value based on the changing value of the NOW() function (be sure to read the docs to learn about this function’s idiosyncrasies), and setting the view filter to look for that value. If it’s daily, the formula is pretty easy. If the schedule is more complex, it might take more than one formula field, but it should be doable.

[ScottWorld]

Welcome to the community, @Walid_Belahmer!

The problem you’re having is because Airtable’s automations don’t loop through found records.

In addition to @Justin_Barrett’s workaround above, another workaround for accomplishing this is the email automation method that I describe in this episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast.

This workaround involves creating a utility table and 2 automations:

Alternatively, if you’re interested in using an external automation tool, you can also achieve this in 2 simple steps in Make.com: