Sorting table results for automated email

[Brendon_Thwaite]

Hi there,

I am somewhat new to Airtable, and need some help. I have built 90% of what I need already however I am stuck with one final challenge. I have created an automation that will send a weekly digest email with all of the logged activities over the past 90 days (calls, emails, meetings etc) that I can share with my clients, specific to their project.

The email that is generated (preview) sorts these table records based on the date/time that they were INPUT TO AIRTABLE instead of the date that they actually occurred (sometimes I log activity a few days after the fact). I have created a date field which has the actual meeting times and would have preferred the automated email to sort results based on that date field however I don’t know how to do that.

Automation info:

Runs every week at Friday 6pm
Action 1 : Find records where date is within past 90 days.
My table is called “Activity”
Find records based on Condition (where date is within the past 90 days)
Action 2 : Send email to me
Subject has “Records / Length” and a text description to indicate the number of total activities
Message has “Records / Render as HTML Grid”

As mentioned above I need to find a way to sort these record based on my “Activity date” field instead of the default sort order which is incorrect.

[ScottWorld]

Welcome to the community, @Brendon_Thwaites!

Unfortunately, Airtable does not provide any ability to sort records in automations unless you write a custom JavaScript script to do so.

Alternatively, I personally prefer using Integromat to do this, which is a low-code/no-code automation platform that offers more native Airtable support in its automations than Airtable itself offers:

Integromat

Airtable Integrations

Part spreadsheet, part database, and entirely flexible.

I actually did a demo of sending emails via Integromat in last week’s BuiltOnAir podcast here:

[kuovonne]

Have you tried creating a view that is sorted by the {Activity Date}, and then doing you “Find” on that view?

[ScottWorld]

^^^ Easier solution. :joy:

Be sure to leave your records ungrouped, or else Airtable won’t respect the sort order.

[ronpascal]

Insanely useful. Thank you:)

use the sorted view and it will be auto sent to email in sorted fashion all problems solved HUGE THANKS!

[Celeste_Bancos]

I was stuck on a similar issue and was about to write my own sorting script when I realized that Airtable has added a Sort List action! This did exactly what I needed and was very simple.

Using a sorted view was not a solution for my situation because I'm finding records dynamically within a "Repeat for each in List of records" loop. I need the flexibility of a find condition that's based on data from the current record from the list.