Date automation notification

1

I need a helping hand with automation notification system.

I have a table of documents with expiring dates and I’d like to know if there is a way of notifying a list of people when the due date is 7 days from expiring. If that’s possible, I’d like to add to the notification, the name of the contract as well.

2

The way I like to do this is…

  • Create a checkbox column, called “expiring in a week”, with formula expiry date = today() + Days(7)
  • Add a “notify” button column that notifies the relevant person
  • Set the notify button to disable if [expiring in a week].Not()
  • Schedule an automation to run every day at 7am
  • Have that automation push all the buttons in the table. It’ll only succeed in pressing the enabled ones, which are the ones expiring in 7 days.

The nice thing about this architecture is it’s easier to test the various components.

  • you can see if your date math is working, based on the checkbox column
  • you can test the notification part by hitting the button yourself, etc

You can even take this architectural principle further - for example if you don’t want to have a cluttered formula inside your button that combines the name, contract name, etc, don’t be afraid to make a “expiring soon message” column, and then reference that column from the button config. The more you break things down into parts, the easier it is to iterate and troubleshoot. And you can always hide these columns after you’ve got everything working.

Feel free to share what you’ve got as you build, and we can give you pointers if you’re stuck

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3

Thank you so much. This helped solve my problem.
I created a button column with a “disabled formula” so that only the expired dates and the ones due within the next 7 days can be pushed.
Next, I created a “push buttons” that presses all the available buttons from the table. Then I set the automation to press only the “push buttons” button every Monday at 9AM (I have restrictions on the amount of automation per month).

Once again, thanks for the help!

1 Like
4

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