Plan availability | Business and Enterprise Scale plans only with varying limitations |
Permissions |
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Platform(s) | Web/Browser, Mac app, and Windows app |
Note
Consider having Omni create an automation for you. With Omni's AI capabilities, you can use plain text requests to build, update, and query data in your Airtable base.
Learn how to use the "When email received" trigger to trigger an automation to run when an email is email is received by the automation.
Creating an email received automation
Open your Airtable home screen.
Open the base where you want to create an automation.
Click Automations.
Click + Create new.
Click + Create automation.
Click + Add trigger.
Once clicked, the available triggers will display for you to choose from.
Select the When email received option.
To continue the setup process, you may now send an email to the email address generated in the previous step.
After sending the email you may click the “Test Trigger” button to confirm that the email was received and that the parsed output matched what you sent
Again, be sure to test all of the steps in the automation that you are building. Once every part of the automation has tested successfully, you’ll likely be ready to turn the automation on. Find the red colored “OFF” toggle and click it so the automation now appears as “ON” in green.
FAQs
Can I send a reply to emails received via this automation?
Yes, you can use our Gmail: Send Email or Send Email automation actions to reply to the sender of the email by including the “Email ID” field from the trigger in the “In reply to” input of the Send Email actions.
Can I receive attachments via this automation?
Yes, attachments will be received and made available via an expiringDownloadUrl that is available for 2 hours after the email is received.
If you would like to keep the attachment for longer, you may write the expiringDownloadUrl into an Attachment Field in your base to save the attachment.
Are there any limits on the size of the email that can be sent?
Yes, we currently do not support emails larger than a total of 30MB in size including attachments.
Why does my trigger work when I send emails directly but not when they're forwarded by a Gmail or Google Workspace compliance rule?
When emails arrive at your automation's generated Airtable address via a Gmail compliance rule or automatic forwarding, the trigger may not fire, even though Gmail delivery logs show the email was successfully delivered. This is expected behavior. Here's why:
Airtable validates SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication on inbound emails as an anti-spoofing measure. When a compliance rule or forwarding rule re-routes an email, the forwarding server's IP address typically isn't in the original sender's SPF record.
The email reaches Airtable's email endpoint, but the SPF check fails, and Airtable silently drops the message before the trigger fires.
No error appears in the automation's run history in this case, because the message never reaches the trigger layer.
To fix this: Instead of forwarding to your automation email address, add it as a direct recipient — in the To, CC, or BCC field — in your Gmail compliance rule or Google Workspace routing rule. Messages sent directly preserve the original sender's authentication headers, so they pass SPF validation and trigger the automation normally.
If you continue to see failures after adding the automation address as a direct recipient, contact Airtable Support and include the automation's run history and any available delivery logs from your email provider.