Airtable automation action: Send email

First, we will set up a trigger to fire when a project enters a "Completed" view. In our Project Tracker base, we have previously created a filter that only allows projects from a completed checkbox field to enter the "Completed" view. To do this, choose the corresponding table and view within the base and test the trigger. After testing successfully, we can move onto setting up the action.

To set up the "Send an email" action click the blue "+ Add Action" button. Then, click on the "Send an email" option. This will bring up a box with configuration options to add recipients, a subject line, and the message body.

Your automation can send out a custom message that combines information from both previous Airtable records referenced in this automation(by either the trigger or previous actions), emojis, rich text, and plain text. To insert static text, such as a single email, enter the text you'd like directly into the input.

You can click the blue and white plus-sign to add dynamic values from the triggering record, or any previous actions. Additionally, you can access more any record's values by clicking on the "Field values" drop-down arrow.

To see an example of how you can format your records as either a list or a grid, particularly helpful for linked records, in an email see this article.

By clicking on the "Show more options" drop-down arrow, you will have the ability to customize four additional parts of the automatic email you send out, which includes "CC", "BCC", "From name", and "Reply to". It's a good idea to BCC your own email address. You can remove your email address after the automation is confirmed to be sending the email correctly.

The "From name" field allows you to add a custom name such as your company rather than your email address on the email receiver's end. It's worth noting that there will still be some "via Airtable" tags visible in the email.

First, confirm that the "To", "Subject", and "Message" fields are filled in. You will then see the "Preview email" button become clickable next to the "Run test" button in the lower left-hand corner of the "Send an email" action's setup menu.

Clicking on this option will pull up a preview of the email so that you can verify that the formatting or structure of the email is appearing the way you would like it to. Doing this before testing the action helps to prevent multiple test emails from being sent out because of formatting updates. This also allows you to see who the test email is being sent out to so that you can warn them about the test email, if necessary.

After your message looks the way you want it to you must click "Run test" to ensure the action is working properly. If the test runs successfully, then at this point it's a good idea to check that the test email sent successfully. If so, you can now turn on the automation so that your custom notification sends out each time a project is completed.

1. In-line image ⇢ HTML
   1. For publicly hosted images, you can include a static in-line image using an HTML image tag. <img src="https://picsum.photos/200">
   2. If you've stored a publicly available image's URL in a field in your base, then you can insert that field's URL token to dynamically have an inline image appear in the body of the email. That will look something like this in the message body, where "Image public URL" is the name of the field where you are storing those URLs:
      
2. Hyperlink to URL of attachment ⇢ Markdown
   
   1. Insert one URL and format using Markdown: [Text](URL)
3. Trigger record (thumbnail image)⇢ Render as HTML list
   1. Insert just the attachment field (or others as desired). Each record would need to have an attachment in their respective attachment field cell to display in the email.
4. Find records (thumbnail image)⇢ Render as HTML grid
   1. Insert just the attachment field (or others as desired).
   2. Using this method you can find 1 specific record with an attachment in another table and send the same attachment for all emails

1. Find records ⇢ Insert list of field values, attachment field, flatten into Attachments field of Send Email action

It isn't currently possible to remove the Airtable branding or add your own custom branding to emails sent via the send email action.

Not at this time. In most cases, if the automation successfully ran, then it means that our mail server at least was able to successfully send the email to the recipient, but that won't confirm whether or not the email ended up in a spam/trash folder.

Non-users can only receive automated emails from this automation action on Pro and Enterprise plan workspaces. Currently, workspaces on the Free or Plus plan are limited to only emailing collaborators with verified emails. However, unlike the Send email action (via Airtable), Free and Plus users can use the Gmail: Send email action to send emails to non-collaborators.

All email messages will show up as from "Airtable Automations" at this email address: noreply+automations@airtableemail.com. However, you can specify a custom "From Name" and "Reply To Email Address". These will appear in the email as "From Name (via Airtable)".

This is dependent on two factors. The first is the number of automation runs left for your workspace as outlined here. The second limit has to do with who is being emailed. No matter the plan type, you can send any number of daily emails to collaborators that have verified emails for their Airtable accounts. For non-collaborators or users that haven't verified their email addresses, bases within workspaces on the Pro plan are limited to 100 unique unverified recipients per day. On Enterprise plans this is not limited. You can view your current base's limits at the top of the Send email action.

Additionally, there is an overarching limit of 1000 recipients per run in automations that contain this action. Consider utilizing the Find records action to "batch" the number of recipients per automation run.

The time with which an email will be sent out using this Automation action is determined by the trigger chosen. If you are looking to send emails at a specific time or within a certain timeframe then check out our article on the "At a scheduled time" Automation trigger.

Make sure each of your collaborators have verified the emails connected to their Airtable accounts. When creating a new Airtable account you should receive an email from Airtable with a link to click to verify your email.

If you are attempting to send an email to a valid email address, but still receiving the "invalid email address" error, this may be a problem with our underlying email service. The fastest to fix this is to have the owner of the email sign up for an Airtable account with that email address, and verify that email address.

We support using Markdown syntax and a variety of HTML tags within your emails to ensure things are formatted the way you'd like. We currently support using the following HTML tags: <b>,<br> <u>, <strong>, <em>, <img>, <a> and <span> tags. You can also include inline CSS by adding a style attribute to your HTML tags.

Likely, the cause is that the test record's email field is blank. If you know how to determine the test record, then you can use that information to troubleshoot and find a solution.