Send interface elements

ghushek · ‎Mar 26, 2023

Hey community. I'm putting together a new CRM, and I'm wondering if it's possible to send chart elements (graphs) in a slack message or email on a regular weekly cadence. Any thoughts or insights appreciated!

Ben_Young1 · ‎Mar 26, 2023

Hey @ghushek!

At this time, it is not possible to send graphs or other Interface elements in any automations.
Additionally, Airtable has not publicly indicated that this feature lives anywhere on their release roadmap.

Now, there is an interesting workaround that you can experiment with, but it's entirely dependent on your available resources or your comfort with JavaScript, JSON, and the Airtable scripting environment (depending on how dynamic you want these charts to be.)

There's a very compelling, open-source tool called QuickChart that will create a rendered chart graphic based on either JSON passed in the query parameters of a GET request or the body of a POST request depending on the complexity of your data.

For example, if I want a graph to report on the number of records in a set of tables, I would encode the following dataset to the URL:

{
    type: "bar",
    data: {
        labels: ["Table 1", "Table 2", "Table 3", "Table 4", "Table 5"],
        datasets: [{
            label: "Record Count",
            data: [120, 60, 50, 180, 120]
        }]
    }
}

Here's the URL:

https://quickchart.io/chart?c={type:%27bar%27,data:{labels:[%27Table%201%27,%27Table%202%27,%27Table%203%27,%27Table%204%27,%27Table%205%27],datasets:[{label:%27Record%20Count%27,data:[120,60,50,180,120]}]}}&backgroundColor=white

If you navigate to that URL in your browser, it will simply return a PNG of the graph.
Then, you can simply pass that link into your Slack or email automation like so:

And here's the end result in Slack:

Worth mentioning that QuickChart also has support for building charts directly from your Airtable data. The documentation can be found here.

See Solution in Thread

Ben_Young1 · ‎Mar 26, 2023

Hey @ghushek!

At this time, it is not possible to send graphs or other Interface elements in any automations.
Additionally, Airtable has not publicly indicated that this feature lives anywhere on their release roadmap.

Now, there is an interesting workaround that you can experiment with, but it's entirely dependent on your available resources or your comfort with JavaScript, JSON, and the Airtable scripting environment (depending on how dynamic you want these charts to be.)

There's a very compelling, open-source tool called QuickChart that will create a rendered chart graphic based on either JSON passed in the query parameters of a GET request or the body of a POST request depending on the complexity of your data.

For example, if I want a graph to report on the number of records in a set of tables, I would encode the following dataset to the URL:

{
    type: "bar",
    data: {
        labels: ["Table 1", "Table 2", "Table 3", "Table 4", "Table 5"],
        datasets: [{
            label: "Record Count",
            data: [120, 60, 50, 180, 120]
        }]
    }
}

Here's the URL:

https://quickchart.io/chart?c={type:%27bar%27,data:{labels:[%27Table%201%27,%27Table%202%27,%27Table%203%27,%27Table%204%27,%27Table%205%27],datasets:[{label:%27Record%20Count%27,data:[120,60,50,180,120]}]}}&backgroundColor=white

If you navigate to that URL in your browser, it will simply return a PNG of the graph.
Then, you can simply pass that link into your Slack or email automation like so:

And here's the end result in Slack:

Worth mentioning that QuickChart also has support for building charts directly from your Airtable data. The documentation can be found here.

siddharth_sd · ‎Apr 20, 2023

Hello.

Can we run a script in the automation where it takes the screenshot of the concerned interface and send it to the designated email IDs?

Ben_Young1 · ‎Apr 20, 2023

No, that isn’t something that is possible using an Airtable script.

siddharth_sd · ‎Apr 20, 2023

Thanks Ben_Young1 for the reply.

If you can help me out with this problem, that would be great - I have an automation which runs everyday based on the status of the products. In the automation, I can add all the records (that satisfy the condition) in a grid, but they are not collated or no count of data is available. How can we run the same using a script or any other tool?