Help

Re: Gmail Integration

1230 0
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Kory_Zelkind
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Looking for someone to help build out a Gmail integration that lets certain user emails be automatically added to the “Outreach Log” flow in the “Publicity” space.

Please let me know if I can provide any additional info!

11 Replies 11
Jonathan_Letts1
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi Kory,

Seems like a good idea! This is totally doable using Zapier. Would you want the entire email contents to be saved or just the date, and would it just be from the first email or would you like it to be every time you send an email to that address it is captured?

For the simplest version, the flow would be something like
Any time a new email is “Sent”
Look up email it was sent to in airtable “customer” table
If it exists, add email to outreach log (or append “last reachout” date)
If it doesn’t exist you could either have it create a new “customer” or you could have it end the process.

You could also have it automatically tagged as publicity or have any attributes populated built into zapier.

Happy to help you out (also would love feedback from the community if there would be a cleaner way of doing it)

frank_johnson
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hi @Kory_Zelkind

I Am interested in your requirement and will be glad to assist you for Gmail integration task as i have done similar work before

please reach me out through skype @ cis.am3 or email me more details at frank@cisinlabs.com

Thanks
Frank

Andrew_Johnson1
8 - Airtable Astronomer
8 - Airtable Astronomer

Hi Kory,
This should be possible to implement and I would be happy to help you build it out as it is well within my area of expertise.
You can reach me on andrewjohnson56782@gmail.com
Best Wishes,
Andrew

It’s not clear to me where “certain user emails” are generated, so there’s a degree of ambiguity in the vision.

Does this process assume the emails are generated inside Airtable?

I think it’s pretty effective to use Zapier like this and as you point out - the level of parsing required could impact how “clean” it might be in the longer view.

If there are significant text parsing or manipulations that need to be performed, Google Apps Script is ready to address these needs. One aspect of the solution may encounter email payloads that are HTML (some apps no longer send plain text versions of the message content). Another desire I see from time-to-time is the ability to transform HTML messages into Markdown so that Airtable’s new rich-text field (which isn’t really “rich”) can render formatted copies of the actual email messages.

Jonathan_Letts1
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

With a zapier integration we could compared every new email sent or received from that linked gmail account to a table with “People” and if the email is in that set, update the field of last email “sent” or “received”

I’m very curious about the google apps script and how else you’re using it. Currently outside of my toolset.

This is what I’m uncertain about because @Kory_Zelkind has not specified exactly where emails are eminating from nor the nature of the content and the purpose. Is it an email inside Airtable (like a record share?) or, is it an email that’s originating elsewhere. I’m reluctant to make any comments until I fully understand the story a bit better, hence my question.

First, the backstory…

If you build stuff with Zapier it indicates you have a propensity to glue apps together, and people who glue apps together often hit ceilings with no-code services. While the ceilings that often come in no-code solutions are being broken through all the time (Integromat is especially agressive with new advanced capabilities), the one breakthrough they will never make is near-free at scale.

It’s not unusual to see integration processes become more costly than the base service because of production scale and where SaaS and PaaS systems aim to stand between your data and your workers or customers. For sure, these are good problems to have because it suggests the business is doing well. However, one must always ask - are these integrations technically AND financially practical? This is the vector that caused me to build numerous integration systems in Google Apps Script and for clients who were predominantly already deep into G-Suite and Google Docs.

Google Apps Script is an ideal way to “own” the integration layer and run it at near-free cost despite significant increases in operational volume. This is why many of my projects tend to emerge to replace or avoid Zapier and Integromat altogether. This is not an indictment of either service - they are wonderful tools that make many ideas come to life and in some cases ideas that were simply not financially possible in any other way.

No-code integration adhesives sit at the foundation of innovation.

For many companies, however, owning the integration layer is as important as the software apps they build. The processes and data interchanges are considered intellectual property and thus critical to their business value. Other reasons for using a scripting environment exist as well, but too vast to discuss here.

Now to your question -

I use Google Apps Script every day, all day for almost every imaginable integration and workflow use case. Here are some examples…

  • Scrape a site for data; perform a little AI on the data; drop it into Airtable.

  • Search all Airtable workspaces, bases, and tables and generate a list of hits ranked by relevance.

  • Enumerate all records in a table; use the value of 16 fields to make a complex computation that involves statistical and financial functions that do not exist in Airtable and then populate a field with the results.

  • Enumerate all records in a table; gather data values and produce a single infographic report that is mailed to a collection of workers who do not have access to Airtable. (like this)

  • Enumerate all records in a table; look for Status=Send Contract; collect all the data from the record, compile into a contract for signature; invoke an e-signatures signing process; listen for signing events; update the record with contract-sent, contract-viewed, contract-signed, contract-rejected. Oh, and do not send the contract if the company has been involved in any previous litigation with the signer; instead, send the contract details to the legal department and set the status to “Pending Legal Review”.

While making systems like this work with no-code adhesives is sometimes possible and easy, it’s typically too much to expect when business requirements become complex or stringent. It’s always the exceptions to the [business] rules that nudge us out of the code-free environment and into the more complex realm of process integration.

Google Apps Script is one of many good choices to overcome limitations.

Just sayin…

I really appreciate all of this. I’ve been using zapie because most of my clients are relatively low volume, but I can imagine it becoming cost prohibitive very quickly. Thank you for sharing.

Ideally, we’re looking for only some emails sent to be added to AirTable, not all emails sent. All emails would be coming from Gmail, not AirTable. We’re only looking for them to be added to the Outreach Log in Publicity inside AirTable. If there was a way to distinguish in Gmail which emails we want to be added, either by a certain command or an add on, that would be great.

Let me know if you need any other information!

Is it possible for some emails to be added to AirTable but not all? For example, we wouldn’t need internal communications added, but would love to keep pitches updated in the Outreach Log so the entire team can see the status of a pitch at any given time.

Yep - that’s what I suspected; emails inbound need to be filtered and treated like data and pushed into Airtable.

The way I do this falls into two categories of process logic:

  1. Use the integrated filtering mechanisms of Gmail to redirect messages from the inbox to a specific folder (i.e., labeling the messages).
  2. Use the body of the message to ferret out and understand if the message is a candidate for sending to Airtable.

In each case, Google Apps Script provides the automation process necessary to identify, parse, and format the incoming candidate messages and then post them as records to the Outreach Log. But, it may also be possible to use Zapier or Integromat to do this.

This is possible in most cases and depends largely on the nature of the content and the ability to craft filtering rules that are reliable.

Absolutely; it’s a simple matter of filtering.

@Bill.French covered it! Thanks!