Calendar view enhancement requests (reminders, delete prompts, persistent view)

For native reminders/notifications, this is certainly something we’re considering and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about it. In the meantime, have you tried using our Zapier integrations? Perhaps you could try integrating Airtable with Google Calendar.

As for your concern about accidentally deleting records while in calendar view—if you wish to unschedule something, simply drag the record into the right-hand sidebar.

+1 for having a “Reminder/Alert via Email” option for Date/Time fields

Hi @Katherine_Duh - Any movement towards a native Airtable reminder/notification feature? This is the one piece that keeps me from using Airtable for process management projects. Thanks!

Could you elaborate more on what you mean by “a native Airtable reminder/notification feature”? What particular features do you feel are missing from the current version of Airtable? For your workflow, how would notifications ideally work?

In the meantime: we recently added the collaborator field, which can be set to automatically notify a collaborator when they’ve been added to a record. This might be useful for you!

Sure: If I have a list of tasks that have deadlines, in Trello, Asana, etc
I can get notified that an item will be due soon, or is overdue.

I would also like to see a native notification system for the date field.

We would also find this very helpful on multiple fronts in order to track follow up needs and other upcoming events.

A reminder function would be fantastic. I’m a recruiter and currently use Airtable as an ATS system and being able to add a reminder to a follow up date would make things much easier. Whether it be in app/browser (when you open airtable you’re reminded of the the follow-ups due that day) or through an integration with outlook or other emailing services, would really love to see this feature some time soon!

@Katherine_Duh Any further progress on this feature? It would be very useful for any base created for CRM, Events or Projects/Tasks.

Yes! A reminder function would be awesome! Photoshopped you a 10 minutes example, because you were so kind to draw me a sketch how to set up my Airtable relational database. Really appreciated that! I think this example could show what we all have in mind?:

I came here looking for this exact feature. I figured I was just missing how to do it. Since Katherine asked for examples above, here is what I’m looking for:

I’m a builder. I need to keep a database of all my subcontractors. Each subcontractor has insurance forms I have to make sure are up to date. I have a column for attachments (PDF files of their insurance certificates) and a date column for when their policy expires. Ideally, I would love to have an alert sent – either just a pop-up on the computer/phone/tablet or an email to my insurance manager, say two weeks or so before their policy is due to expire, so we can make sure to contact them to update their info. And even if having a reminder prior to the date set in the expiry column would be too difficult, an alert on the actual expiration date would be fine, too.

I’m not sure how difficult it would be to incorporate this sort of feature, but it would be great!

I tried using Zapier to create events in Google Calendar as an alternative. The problem I had is that one of the most important fields that the calendar event needs to contain is the “Client Name.” But because Client Name is a field in a separarate, linked, table, the created event won’t display the contents of the Client Name field. Instead I get the (relatively useless) unique identifier key field for that record.

@Aaron_Rittmaster
There’s a way of having the “Client Name” in the primary field and it will show up in the Calendar.
Take a look at this: Using a formula in the primary field.

When we click on the calendar view record entry, the delete button is just too easy to press. We need a confirmation prompt on this and all record deletions to avoid erasing records that we’re unable to easily retrieve.

Can we make this happen sooner than later?

Hi @Katherine_Duh. +1 on reminders here too. It seems a no-brainer to me. I have been using SmartSheets, but in so many ways AirTable is better for me. BUT SmartSheets reminds me of things I need to know, when I need to know them.

In the example below I set a reminder 12 months from the date of a grant (we’re a grant-giving charity) so that I remember to prompt the grantee in question to send their annual update.

I really think that native (due) date notifications are pretty neccessary feature for Airtable. As I see around (myself included), people are using AT as a to-do list and checklist and kind of project-management. But what is project management without notification?

Using Zapier or other integrations is really user-unfriendly for that – you have to create a calendar + zaps. And it does not work well either.

I just imagine the simple way how it could work. 1. every base/calendar should contain some general option „receive notifications“; 1. date field definition should contain „notify me“ option; 2. whenever the time/date of the field reaches now() / today(), it would send an e-mail to an e-mail address of the users who subscribed to receiving.

Thanks in advance!
Tomáš

Team Airtable,

You have done an awesome job on Airtable. We love it at our company. However, it just lacks reminders which are very important as part of any business project.

I hope you get that done soon.

Please do respond.

Thanks

I could just do a workaround for this problem, not a great one but works for me.
I could create a zap which triggers for a new record in an airtable view and acts to send an email. This new record appears on a particular date, using below formula
IF(DATETIME_DIFF(TODAY(),{Reminder Date},‘days’)=0,Client,‘NO’)
The view is set to filter records which do NOT have a NO in the cell columns.

Hope this helps.
Cheers

Reminders would be make or break for Airtable in regards to usage at my company.

This feature should be a top priority for the develop team.

In my company we use a follow up collum, but we can’t receive notifications abou this dates.

This would help me a lot, because I’ve tried to make the flow with zapier, but I’ll need to open a new record each time for a single client…

+10000 on the reminders!

Ooo how interesting! Nice one, Neeraj!

There are a couple of potential solutions to this with Zapier which hasn’t been mentioned - the simplest is to base a Zap on a View filtered by “{Reminder Date} is today”. This is very straightforward to implement with just a date field and a single view with the filter. You then have a Zap triggered by a New Record in View. The only problem with this approach is that Zapier will only send a reminder once for each record (even when the Reminder Date is changed).

There is, however, an alternative, and that is to use a Scheduled Zap - i.e. one triggered by the Schedule trigger included with Zapier. These can be set to Monthly, Weekly, Daily or Hourly - and because you aren’t then reliant on Zapier determining whether it has already been triggered by a record, and you can essentially do whatever you want in the Zap after that.

I’ve documented this in a blog post if anyone is interested:

Sending Notifications from Airtable

I’d welcome any thoughts and comments!

I don’t see a way to edit the calendar view, but I’m new to the tool and could be missing something. I’d love to be able to add a couple of fields and color code. I’m using it for an email marketing calendar, and it’s helpful to know at a glance which department is sending, and who the audience is.

Love the tool so far!

Hi, +1 for notifications. I am considering using AirTable for project management, so I need notifications about due dates.
What about having an option for each date field to send a notification when it becomes now/today (as @Tomas_Baranek suggests). I prefer to send notifications to Slack though.
Alternatively, and this might be easier for you do implement, I would like to get notification when an item appears in a specific view (without necessarily getting updated). That’s it. Because then I can set up a view of tasks which are due today or sooner and use this notification for it.
You did a lot of work, no doubt. This feature seems not to be very difficult to implement, and it would improve usability a lot, not only for all these people in this thread (you can check out how many people just visited this discussion without replying, they are probably interested as well).