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Re: Communicating Shifts to Hundreds of non Base Members

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pearbiscuits
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I'm looking for a way to communicate shift assignments to hundreds of individuals who are not members of my base. I use Airtable to manage poll workers. For their work assignments, I integrate Airtable with Make.com. When a staff member offers an assignment to someone, Make.com compiles data from multiple tables into an email.

Each assignment has a set schedule. Schedule details have been included in the email in a bulleted list. The source for that list is a long text field with RTF enabled. 

The schedule descriptions are often complicated and a list is not the best way to display the info. I'd like to incorporate a separate Shifts table that can be linked to the assignments. This would allow much more specificity in describing the work schedule. 

Ideally, this is what I would like to get out of this, and I'm not sure the best way to go about it:

  • In the initial offer email, clearly list all of the shifts that the person would be required to work
    • I've been imagining a table in the email. Some assignments have MANY shifts. In those cases it would be nice if the table could be a PDF attachment, or a link to some other view, but it's not necessary. I'll make do with a lengthy email if necessary.
  • Quickly re-communicate just the shifts to any poll worker as needed.
    • E.g., after accepting the assignment, a poll worker says there is one day they won't be available. A staff member can make that change and click a button to share the shifts again. (or the shifts are visible in some other way?)

My searching has turned up options to create PDFs, but as best as I can tell that has to be done on a one-by-one basis, which won't work for hiring 800+ people. I've hit a wall and suspect someone else will have an idea that I'm missing!

2 Replies 2

Yeah creating that 'Shifts' table sounds right

Are all the tables that Make.com compiles data from within the same base?  If so, I reckon I'd try creating a new table where each record represents a single offer to a single worker, includes details specific to that offer, and is linked to all the shifts for that offer

You can then set up an automation that will run a "Find Record" action to grab all the shifts linked to an offer and insert that into the email as a table, and you could use the "Send Gmail" action if you were hitting limits about emailing non-collaborators daily

If some of the data's in another base it gets slightly trickier, and I think I'd either try to sync stuff over via a view or use Make to update the "Offer" record with the relevant details before using Airtable to send it out, does that make sense?

Thanks!

Yes - everything that Make.com is using is in the same Base. I've already been using this setup for a while, without the Shifts part:

  • Roles Table
  • Locations Table
  • Elections Table
  • Vacancies Table (combining Roles/Locations/Elections for election-specific vacancies)
  • People Table
  • Assignments (combining People and Vacancies - essentially offers that then get accepted/declined)

So I'd add a Shifts table and link those to the Vacancy and then later the Assignment and the Person. I've only really been sending Assignment communications through Make.com since I can do a lot more with conditional language, but I like the idea of using the Find Records action to easily send a table of Shifts to people on-demand.