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Help with Strategy and Probably Custom Development

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Alan_Houser1
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hello!

We’re helping a client build their marketing site, and we also want to help release an MVP using Airtable (I think).

Overview:

The app will match a “teacher” with “student”. Each party will receive an email introducing them, and encouraging the next steps.

Everyone will register through the site; this is an easy part— to connect Typeform to Airtable to collect all the data. (2 forms: teacher form + student form)

Screen Shot 2018-08-17 at 5.16.29 PM.png

On the admin backend, the “matching” of the teacher and student will be done manually.

The admin will manually select both parties from a list and click to send both parties the same HTML email that contains connection instructions. (one email send to both parties)

Screen Shot 2018-08-17 at 5.16.43 PM.png

So here are the questions…

Is it possible to build functionality to select two rows (teacher & student) and fire-off a pre-formatted HTML email to these members?

What platform be needed to hold the email template and on-command, populate several fields with data from Airtable + send the email?

To have an admin record of the pairing, we also need a way to write back to Airtable. (my thought— this could be triggered by a “CC” on the email, but maybe there’s a better way)

There will be other needs— the admin should be able to filter the records to narrow the list. In my generic view, I’m showing a handful of records, but there could be hundreds to wade through.

If possible, an interesting solution could be to:

[1] Find a student
[2] Lock student
[3] Find a teacher
[4] Lock a teacher
[5] Mash the GO Button

I’m sure several of you have awesome answers!
Please post comments/questions here, or email me directly: hello@squareflair.com

Alan Houser

7 Replies 7
openside
10 - Mercury
10 - Mercury

You could do this using the API. Or could also be done with a platform like Zapier which we’ve done a lot of work with between Airtable and Zapier.

Sounds like a fun project! Good luck with it.

Dan @ Openside

Thanks, Dan. Do you have portfolio/case-study examples on your website? (URL?)

Sure, I’ll send you details directly via your email above.

Dan

Patrick_Ford1
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi @Alan_Houser1I see your project and I think it could be done easily using a similar setup to what I’ve made for our Makerspace.

That sounds awesome. How do we connect?

Alan_Houser1
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Airtable Support just blew my mind. Before posting to the forum, I send the same question to Support, and (Laurie) replied with this!

(I told her the following too)
Please know that this type of response is key to converting me from tire-kicker to platform champion.

__________ SUPPORT __________

I’ve given some thought to your setup and have the following suggestions. +1

  • I assume you have a Teacher table and a Student table.
  • I would then create a third table called Pairing (or some other name that makes sense).
  • You would then create a linked record in the Pairing table to Student and another for Teacher.
  • Next, add a Status field (single select would work well here) with Go, Tentative or other statuses for the pairing.
  • Finally, use a lookup field in the Pairing table to pull in the Student’s email and the Teacher’s email. With this, each time you add a student or teacher, the email will automatically populate in the Pairing table.

That would take care of how to pair up the students and teachers. You would next want to use an integration service like Zapier to make a custom email that would send to both the teacher and the student. To get started with building a Zapier integration for Airtable, I’d recommend taking a look at (redacted: Using-Zapier-to-integrate-Airtable-with-other-apps-and-services). We have a specific article for custom emails at (redacted)

Raphi_Levine
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Sounds pretty cool and pretty simple.
Check out Zapier.
One possible solution can be, if you are doing things semi-manual, you can create a new base (linked to the Members base) where you can input the teacher and the student. Zapier can watch for new entries, and send an email via GMail (or a number of other email service providers).
You can check out wufoo also.
Best of luck.