I am using Airtable to schedule a lobby day with 115 legislators and 100 advocates. I currently have two tables, one for tracking the legislator meetings (“Meetings” table) and the other for tracking the advocates (“Advocates” table). There are multiple links between the two.
For example, when I schedule a meeting with a legislator, I use a column that links to the Advocates table to add the attendees for that meeting.
I wish to send two types of emails:
Email 1 to the legislators including the following columns from Airtable:
(a) time
(b) meeting link
(c) listing the advocate names (from second table via linked field)
(d) attaching several documents (uploaded to Airtable)
QUESTION 1: Last year I did this through sendgrid’s app and it went to spam for most of the offices. Is there a better way of doing this through integromat or sendgrid directly that is less likely to go to spam and actually attaches the documents as real attachments, not links? I am currently signed up for the free version of all three, but am willing to pay for a 1-month upgrade in order to do this efficiently.
QUESTION 2: Also, is there a way of improving the format of linked fields. For example, the advocate names currently translate into the programs as an awkward list like this with really confusing mix of commas and quotation marks: Jane Smith , “Josh Smith, Org X”, “Harry Henderson, Org Y”, Mary Henderson. I’d ideally like to eliminate the quotation marks or add line breaks between the names, but I might just be hoping for too much with this one.
Here is an example of an email process I set up through integromat where it doesn’t even pull the advocate names, but rather some reference number for the advocates… and it also doesn’t attach my documents or even link to them. Clearly not sure what I’m doing wrong here!
Email 2: to each of the attendees with personal schedules with the following information:
(a) Legislator name
(b) Meeting time
(c) meeting link
(d) advocate names (from second table via linked field)
(e) advocate emails (from second table via linked field)
Last year I did this from a view in the Meetings tab, filtering each advocates name, selecting all the records, sending them to myself, and then forwarding to the advocate. Obviously not the most streamlined process. But it did present it in a grid that at least made it clear which link was for which meeting. Here is a screenshot of that:
Question 3: Any suggestions on how to do this more efficiently?
As you may have guessed, I am a pretty beginner-level user of Airtable. I understand most of the concepts, am able to create links between tables, am able to figure out most formulas, but I do not understand HTML coding, and usually bungle my way through setting up automations in things like Zapier or Integromat (I usually figure it out in the end, but there’s lots of youtube videos and testing first). Thank you for your help as I try to figure this out!
Here is an example screenshot of most of the relevant columns in case this is helpful:
