Trigger email send if record not created by certain time on day

[Peggy_Khiev]

Hi,

Thank you in advance for your help! I’m trying to create an automation trigger when a record is not created at 5pm on the day of the field “Due Date” (so that nobody gets offended if they plan on turning in their work by 4:59pm). Is there a way to do this without external integration (Zapier and the like)?

Additionally, how do I adjust the time zone so that it’s reflecting 5pm US Pacific Time?

Thanks,
Peggy

[Bill_French]

Peggy_Khiev:

create an automation trigger when a record is not created at 5pm

It’s a difficult challenge when automation processes must detect the absence of activity and platform designers typically miss this very likely requirement.

There are a few approaches. Here’s one that gives you a trackable history of compliance with the process.

1. Imagine a table that serves no other purpose than to manage a list of all the mandatory process steps that must occur each day. Further, imagine a specific field in these records such as “Task Completed” which could be a date/time or a check box. The mandatory records would be created through automation each morning and would include a field indicating the name of each task or milestone.

2. As the day progressed and milestones are completed, you use another automation to sense such completion and trigger to mark them with the date/time that they were addressed.

3. Now you have a daily list of every milestone successfully reached and ones that remain incomplete. A third automation simply executes at 4:59p to create reminders for each incomplete task which is easily maintained in filtered view. The reminder process would mark each incomplete message as “reminded” which could also be used to create followup reminders the next day.

Peggy_Khiev:

how do I adjust the time zone so that it’s reflecting 5pm US Pacific Time?

I don’t think you can - instead, set the automation time offset to factor in the true time you want the automation to run.

[Peggy_Khiev]

@Bill.French
Tank you so much, Bill! I really appreciate it.

As someone not too code-savvy yet, I’ve changed it to something much simpler. I pre-build all records and will be asking the collaborators (author) to drop in their files. So
column 1, collaborator, column 2, file attachment, column 3, due date and time (5pm), column 4, current date and time (Now()), and column 5, trigger time (datetime diff between column 4 and 3, in minutes). The trigger is when trigger time (time difference) is greater than 1 and when column 2 (file attachment) is empty. I’m testing it on GMT time and it seems to work.

Can you advise how to set the automation time offset? Thanks!

[Bill_French]

Peggy_Khiev:

Can you advise how to set the automation time offset? Thanks!

Yeah, imagine you’re in MST, and you want the trigger to fire at 4:59p PDT. Just set it to fire at 5:59 MDT.