Zapier is a third-party service that connects Airtable to many other apps and services. This article is specifically designed to teach you how to create a Zap which will automatically send you an email notification every time that a new record is created in an Airtable base. You can learn more about the basics of integrating Airtable with other apps and services with Zapier by reading this support article.
Example 1: Creating a zap that will send an email notification whenever a new record is created
The basic structure of a Zap is that there is a trigger app and an action app. Whenever a specified event happens in the trigger app (e.g., for YouTube this might be "A video was uploaded to a specified channel," or for Tumblr this might be "I liked a post") it triggers an action in the action app.
When you want to set up a Zap that will send you an email as a result of something occurring in Airtable, then Airtable is considered the trigger app and your email client is considered the action app.
Example 1: Creating a zap that will send an email notification whenever a new record is created
Let's say we have an Airtable base of sales deals, and we want to be notified via email whenever a new deal record is created in the "Deals" table of our "Sales CRM" base.
After connecting your Airtable account and your email account with Zapier, you will create a Zap that makes Zapier regularly look for new records in a specified Airtable base and table. For each of those new records, the Zap send you an email.
From the Zapier dashboard, under the "My Zaps" tab, click the "Make a New Zap" button:
You'll then be brought to the Zap configuration page, where you can name your Zap.
The first step of any Zap is to set up a trigger. In this case, we would like Airtable to trigger an action (sending an email)—so Airtable would be considered the trigger app.
After selecting Airtable as the trigger app, you will be prompted to choose the specific conditions for activating the trigger. In this case, we want the Zap to run whenever a new record is available. (For an example of a Zap in which the trigger only runs when a new record is available in a specified view, see here.)
The next step is to connect your Airtable account to Zapier (or to select an already connected Airtable account). Note that if you want to connect your Airtable account, you will need to have your API key.
After selecting the appropriate account, you'll then be prompted to configure the trigger-specific setup options. For Airtable as a trigger, we'll need to specify the base and table by clicking the dropdown menu and selecting the appropriate options (in this case, we want the "Sales CRM" base and the "Deals" table).
For the last part of the first step, Zapier will ask you to test your trigger. If everything works, then you'll be prompted to move onto the next step of your Zap.
For the second step, you'll be asked to pick an action app. You can pick Gmail, Email by Zapier (which will send an outbound email from a custom @zapiermail.com email address), Mailgun, or another mail service supported by Zapier. For this example, let's pick Gmail as the action app.
You'll then be asked to select an action for Gmail to take. There are a variety of potential options, but for our purposes, we want to pick Send Email.
The next step is to connect your Gmail account to Zapier (or to select an already connected Gmail account).
After that, you'll need to set up the template for the email. There are several customization options here, but at a minimum, you'll need to specify an email address to which the email notifications can be sent, a subject line, and some body text.
When composing the email template for your action step, you can incorporate specific parts (variables) of the incoming data from Airtable into the template. These variables can be added into the Zapier fields by clicking on the variable button next to each Zapier field (which resembles some lines with a circular plus button inside it). When in the Zapier fields, each variable appears in a gray rounded rectangle shape.
In our example, let's say that for every new record created, you want to have an email notification sent to you and to the specific sales rep who's been assigned to the new deal. Since every email notification will always be sent to you, your email address will be static, and all you need to do is type it directly into the "To" field.
To add another email address, click the + button. Next, we'll want to put in the email address of the sales rep who's been assigned a given deal. This email address will be a variable (because it'll vary depending on the selection of sales rep). Click on the variable button, then you can select one of the fields from the "Deals" table of our Airtable base—if we pick the "Rep's Email" field, then the email notification will be sent to whomever's email is in that field for the new record.
You can also use variables in other parts of the email template. In constructing the email's subject line, for example, you can have it say the name of the new deal record that was just created by using the Name variable.
Once you're done creating the email template, click the blue Continue button. Zapier will create a test email for you before you're done completing the step so you can check to see if everything looks good.
Once everything's set, then just click the blue Create & Continue button, and then the orange Finish button.
If you haven't already done so, Zapier will prompt you to give your Zap a name. Then you can turn it on. Congrats! You've set up email notifications!
Example 2: Creating a zap that will send an email notification whenever the status of a record changes
Suppose that you're using Airtable for task management, and rather than sending an email notification whenever any new record is created, you'd rather that an email notification get sent out whenever a task becomes overdue. This can be accomplished in Zapier as well, by using the New Record in View trigger.
First, we need to create a view which just contains records marked as overdue. (To mark records as overdue, you can either set up a base where tasks can be marked manually as overdue, or you can set up a conditional formula field which will automatically show if a task is overdue or not.)
The next step is to create the Zap on Zapier's site. From the Zapier dashboard, under the "My Zaps" tab, click the "Make a New Zap" button:
You'll then be brought to the Zap configuration page, where you can name your Zap. Since we would like Airtable to trigger an action (sending an email), select Airtable as the trigger app.
After selecting Airtable as the trigger app, you will be prompted to choose the specific conditions for activating the trigger. In this case, we want the Zap to run whenever a new record appears in a view.
The next step is to connect your Airtable account to Zapier (or to select an already connected Airtable account). Note that if you want to connect your Airtable account, you will need to have your API key.
After selecting the appropriate account, you'll then be prompted to configure the trigger-specific setup options. For the New Record in View trigger, you'll need to specify the base, table, and view by clicking the dropdown menus and selecting the appropriate options (in this case, we want the "Team Tasks" base, the "Projects" table, and the "Overdue tasks" view).
For the last part of the first step, Zapier will ask you to test your trigger. If everything works, then you'll be prompted to move onto the next step of your Zap.
For the second step, you'll be asked to pick an action app. You can pick Gmail, Email by Zapier (which will send an outbound email from a custom @zapiermail.com email address), Mailgun, or another mail service supported by Zapier. For this example, let's pick Gmail as the action app.
You'll then be asked to select an action for Gmail to take. There are a few potential options, but for our purposes, we want to pick Send Email.
The next step is to connect your Gmail account to Zapier (or to select an already connected Gmail account).
After that, you'll need to set up the template for the email. There are several customization options here, but at a minimum, you'll need to specify an email address to which the email notifications can be sent, a subject line, and some body text.
When composing the email template for your action step, you can incorporate specific parts (variables) of the incoming data from Airtable into the template. These variables can be added into the Zapier fields by clicking on the variable button next to each Zapier field (which resembles some lines with a circular plus button inside it). When in the Zapier fields, each variable appears in a gray rounded rectangle shape.
In our example, let's say that for every record that shows up in the "Overdue tasks" view, you want to have an email notification sent to the person who's been assigned the overdue task. This email address will be a variable (because it'll vary depending on the selection of assignee). Click on the variable button, then select one of the fields from the "Projects" table of our Airtable base—if we pick the "Assignee's Email" field, then the email notification will be sent to whomever's email is in that field for the overdue record.
You can also use variables in other parts of the email template. In constructing the email's subject line, for example, you can have it say the name of the task by using the Name variable.
Once you're done creating the email template, click the blue Continue button. Zapier will create a test email for you before you're done completing the step so you can check to see if everything looks good.
Once everything's set, then just click the blue Create & Continue button, and then the orange Finish button.
If you haven't already done so, Zapier will prompt you to give your Zap a name. Then you can turn it on. Congrats! You've set up email notifications!
