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Create "Top 3" Email Automation - Limit Number of Records?

carimz
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  • carimz
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  • 9 replies

Hello! 

I'm trying to create an email automation to go out to my team on a weekly basis that would display our top three social media posts by engagements within a certain timeframe. I've figured out how to set up the email and created a view filtering for that timeframe and sorting by engagements. 

I've seen there's not really a way to limit a view to a certain number of records automatically, but I wondered if anyone had any workarounds or ideas for setting up this email to go out without the entire list having to go out each time and without me having to go in and manually change something in order for the email to go out? 

Tall order, but appreciate any help.

4 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8768 replies
  • December 19, 2023

As you've discovered, there is no built-in way in Airtable to do this.

There is actually one highly convoluted way of doing this in Airtable, but it is extremely time-intensive to setup and it is an extremely convoluted process. It also adds a lot of clutter to your base as well. I would not recommend it, and it would take way too long for me to type up here, but it is a much more advanced variation of the very simple technique that I describe in this podcast episode.

Instead of going down that path, there is a much quicker & much easier way of doing this — and it's the way that I do it for my Airtable consulting clients. You can simply use Make's advanced Airtable automations & integrations. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you will see that you can search through your Airtable records, sort them by whatever value you want, and limit the search results to however many records you want to retrieve.

 

carimz
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  • carimz
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  • 9 replies
  • December 20, 2023
ScottWorld wrote:

As you've discovered, there is no built-in way in Airtable to do this.

There is actually one highly convoluted way of doing this in Airtable, but it is extremely time-intensive to setup and it is an extremely convoluted process. It also adds a lot of clutter to your base as well. I would not recommend it, and it would take way too long for me to type up here, but it is a much more advanced variation of the very simple technique that I describe in this podcast episode.

Instead of going down that path, there is a much quicker & much easier way of doing this — and it's the way that I do it for my Airtable consulting clients. You can simply use Make's advanced Airtable automations & integrations. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you will see that you can search through your Airtable records, sort them by whatever value you want, and limit the search results to however many records you want to retrieve.

 


Thank you! I'm playing around with Make now to see how I can set it up. Definitely going to be a learning curve, but seems much simpler than the convoluted solution you alluded to! 🙂

ScottWorld
1 person likes this
  • ScottWorld
    ScottWorld
carimz
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  • carimz
  • Author
  • Participating Frequently
  • 9 replies
  • December 20, 2023
ScottWorld wrote:

As you've discovered, there is no built-in way in Airtable to do this.

There is actually one highly convoluted way of doing this in Airtable, but it is extremely time-intensive to setup and it is an extremely convoluted process. It also adds a lot of clutter to your base as well. I would not recommend it, and it would take way too long for me to type up here, but it is a much more advanced variation of the very simple technique that I describe in this podcast episode.

Instead of going down that path, there is a much quicker & much easier way of doing this — and it's the way that I do it for my Airtable consulting clients. You can simply use Make's advanced Airtable automations & integrations. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you will see that you can search through your Airtable records, sort them by whatever value you want, and limit the search results to however many records you want to retrieve.

 


As a follow-up, do I have to use Make then to send the email or can that be imported back to Airtable somehow? I noticed with Airtable I can send the email from Airtable, but it seems I have to connect my email account in order to send via Make, which unfortunately, my company's security settings won't allow. 

ScottWorld
1 person likes this
  • ScottWorld
    ScottWorld
ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8768 replies
  • December 20, 2023

Yes, there is definitely a learning curve. I have provided some good training resources in this thread: https://air.tableforums.com/t/make-com-basic-navigation-tips/277 

And yes, you could just use Make to mark those records in Airtable in a certain way, and then your Airtable automation could find those marked records.

p.s. I’m the top Airtable/Make consultant in the community. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld

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