When building an Automation, you may choose the "Send an email" action. When the automation runs successfully, a corresponding email will be sent to selected email targets, containing the customizable information of your choosing during the automation configuration process.
Automations are included in every Airtable plan, with varying limits depending on your plan. For more information please see airtable.com/pricing.
Setup
After you have configured your base in the manner you choose, you can then begin configuring your automation. To start creating an automation, click on “Automations” in the upper right corner of your screen. Then, click “Create an automation” to begin the setup process, see this article for an example. For this example, we will be setting up an automation that sends an email when a project, in our Project Tracker template, is completed.
Choose a trigger
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.
Add an 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.
NOTE
You may email any number of collaborators with verified emails, or, depending on your plan, a set number of other unique email addresses (non-collaborators) per day. You'll see this denoted at the top of the send email action.
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.
TIP
Looking to add a break to the body of your email? Consider using a page break by inserting the<br> tag.
Customize options
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.
Preview 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.
TIP
Remember that if you change something in your base, then you will need to retest the trigger step in the automation in order to see the update reflected in the preview email.
Run a test
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.
NOTE
Running into a problem or error in your automation? Check out our troubleshooting automations article for some helpful tips and potential solutions.
FAQ
What is the sender email address?
Currently, 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)".
How many emails can I send per day?
No matter the plan type, you can send any number of daily emails to collaborators that have verified emails for their Airtable accounts. Currently, bases on the Free plan are limited to only emailing collaborators with verified emails. For non-collaborators, bases within workspaces on the Pro plan can send emails to 100 unique recipients per day. You can view your current base's limits at the top of the "Send email" action.
How do I schedule an email to be sent out?
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.
Why aren't emails sending correctly to my collaborators?
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.
Why am I getting an 'invalid email address' error using a valid 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.
How can I format the emails I send out?
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.
I'm getting an error that says my "To" input is empty, what does this mean?
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.
What are the ways I can add attachments to an email I'm sending out?
There are a few options for adding images to emails sent via Automations:
As an in-line image (message body):
- Hyperlink to URL of attachment ⇢ Markdown
- Insert one URL and format using Markdown: [Text](url)
- Trigger record ⇢ Render as HTML list
- 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.
- Find records ⇢ Render as HTML grid
- Insert just the attachment field (or others as desired).
- Using this method you can find 1 specific record with an attachment in another table and send the same attachment for all emails
As a file attachment:
- Find records ⇢ Insert list of field values, attachment field, flatten into Attachments field of Send Email action