Building a scheduled notification system (daily cron job?)

[Daniel_Hollands1]

I’m building a core process database using Coda, part of which is facilitating a regular cadence of reviewing the docs.

I want to be able to set a date somewhere in a table, and once that date is reached, I want a notification to be sent informing the recipient what they need to do (the recipient and the information will also be part of the table).

I’ve toyed with the Automations, and I see I can set a daily trigger, but I’m having some trouble with the If and Then parts, and I’m not really sure if it’s up to the task.

Is what I want possible with the Automations tool? Are there any other ways of getting what I need?

Thanks.

[anon1959570]

In my experience automations are decently reliable. You can definetly achieve what you want using them. If you are struggling with something… drop a demo doc and the community will guide you in the right direction.

[Daniel_Stieber]

Hey @Daniel_Hollands1 ,
what I like to do is separate the logic from the automation. That gives me more flexibility and feels more natural then the “if/then” inside the automation. It also helps with testing. Here is an example for your question:

I have a table with some text, the notification date, the person, and for recurring tasks, a set next to (optional).

I have three buttons:

• A button to notify (click to expand)

  

• A button to update the date after notification (click to expand)

  

• A button to push both buttons (click to expand)

  

The logic is in the 3rd button:

It is simply disabled if its not today. Then in the automation, I just trigger this button on all rows every day. It will go through all rows and whenever a button is enabled, it will push it and therefor trigger the notification and interval update.
The cool thing is: you can see if the logic works right away. only the button for “Clean house” is active, since its today.

Automation settings

Without the interval update, you can just do it all in one button of course (action + logic)

Hope that suits your need!

[anon1959570]

BIG BIG thumbsup to this: “Separate logic from the automation“!

[Daniel_Hollands1]

Thank you so much. I’ve been snowed under at work, but I will take a look at your examples and see if I can either figure it out or put together a sample doc at some point next week.