Hello everyone!
Today we are announcing the availability of our new building block - Automation!
Automation helps move the product closer to us realizing our vision of helping makers create documents as powerful as apps. Now you can automate workflows associated with your data via an automation rule that lives right next to the data. You can now create a rule to send you daily stock quotes, or a rule to remind you to water your plants, or a rule to send out summary emails on a schedule. The possibilities are endless.
To get started simply click on the robot icon in the toolbar to open the Automations panel and create a rule. Automation rules have two parts: WHEN, where you tell the rule when to run and THEN, where you tell the rule what to do. We have also added few examples in the product to inspire you. To try an example simply click on Create and follow the prompts.
We also have a starter kit in our template gallery with a lot more examples of things you can do to help fuel your imagination. Looking forward to seeing what you Coda with automation!
Himanshu
PS - We also announced the feature on Product Hunt today. If you have been using automations we would love if you can share your experience on Product Hunt and upvote us if you feel that we deserve it.
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This automation system looks really interesting!
Can’t wait to try it with Gmail / Slack for some notifications 
Keep going!
Kevin
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Great, already using it for slack and email notifications.
Would be awesome if it could be integrated into zaps!
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This is great addon! Thanks guys!
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Hey there! This is great!
When I was trying it, I had the Row added option for trigger. It has disappeared. What is the workaround?
I’m so sorry to miss time to fully test all the recent features!
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Hi Exam_Sprint,
We don’t have a clean way yet but as a workaround, you could use an automation to create new rows which can then be used to trigger Zaps!
Preeyanka
@preeyanka Has there been any work done to figure out the addition of a notification on a new row? This is something that would be great to use as a trigger!
On another note, I actually came to this thread to ask about the Slack integration. What is the difference between posting as my user name and posting as my private account (ie. I see the post options: watkins (which is my account) and User’s private Slack account.
Is there any way to enable posting via a Coda bot? Even if that’s something we would have to set up as a custom bot on our end and notify through a webhook.
Hi Drew,
I totally agree that a new row trigger would be super helpful. It’s something we want to get to, soon!
On using packs & automation
On the Slack pack, we give you the option of configuring the connection as a private account - that means only you can use the pack to take actions. It adds a level of protection for things like Slack and Gmail. To use a private connection, the automation needs to be set up to run as you, not as automation bot. In this scenario, only you can edit the automation - not your teammates. Here’s an example screenshot of what the configuration looks like.
If you also see your account, it means that you’ve also set up a pack connection as a shared account - this means anyone inside the doc can use the shared credentials to take actions. If you want to give people access to post actions but don’t want to use a personal account, creating a shared dummy account is a good way to do this.
On the Coda bot side, we do not have support to enable posting via a Coda bot. Hope that helps!
Let me know if you have other questions.
Best,
Preeyanka
