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Auto generating email and SMS alerts when the status of a project changes

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Owen_Hunnam
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi there,

I’m new to the AirTable platform and community. We’re a digital agency and I’m looking to deploy AirTable as the central platform to manage all our client projects. I’ve set up a project tracker that is working nicely, but I would like to give our clients the option to receive automatic SMS and email alerts when their projects change status.

I have integrated with the Twillo API but can only see a way to send SMS messages to a batch of clients manually. Is there any way to achieve what I need (ie create a series of Templates in Twillo and SendGrid which then automatically trigger to the client once certain rules are met. Ie. when a project changes status to ‘in development’, AirTable checks if the client has ticked the SMS and Email alert field, then finds the SMS and Email template for the ‘status change’ and sends it to them?

Any help from the community on this would be amazing!

All the best,

Owen

3 Replies 3

Welcome to the community, @Owen_Hunnam! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: If you haven’t seen the announcement, Airtable now supports automations for bases in Pro and Enterprise plan workspaces (look for the new “Automations” item next to “Blocks” in the upper-right corner of your base). The system is still in its infancy (i.e. it’s still in active beta), so only a few options are currently available, and triggering blocks can’t be done yet. You can probably still do what you want, but it will require writing scripts (similar to the scripting block, but directly in the new automation system) to use your existing SendGrid and Twilio API credentials with their respective services, and setting up views to trigger those scripts. If you’d like help with that setup, just shout and we’ll do what we can. :slightly_smiling_face:

(FWIW, one of the “action” options in the new system is to send an email. However, the email is sent from Airtable’s own address, and there isn’t a way to change it so that it comes from you, which is why I don’t recommend that as an email alternative in your situation.)

Keith_Horwood
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hey Owen! I was alerted to your post and built a quick solution for you;

https://autocode.com/src/keith/airtable-notify-field-change/

You can fork and deploy it in just a click. If you’re not familiar with Autocode it’s because we just launched on July 7th. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: We’ve been close with the Airtable team for a while and have it built in as a first-class integration.

It uses an example base that’s similar to what you describe:

And automatically sends (1) SMS messages using the utils/sms API and (2) Gmail e-mails using the gmail/messages API. You can find links for everything from the linked source above.

Let me know if you have any questions!

@Owen_Hunnam: Also, be sure to look into Integromat, which can easily do this for you!