Forum Discussion

IvanWeiss's avatar
IvanWeiss
Qrew Captain
6 years ago

Start Email in Outlook with To and Subject Filled Out

I am very new to Quick Base so I kind of am looking for help on this with some baby steps (appreciate that in advance)!  I am creating a project management app and created a "Project Directory"  I have one table "Projects" and another table "Contacts".  I created a third table "Project Members"  This table related to both projects and contacts and has another field called Role (to identify their role for the project).  This is for "external" project members

Separately in my Projects table I have several pre-defined roles for our internal project team (Project Administrator, Project Manager, Designer, etc.)

I want to create two "send email" buttons.  One is just for our internal project team and the second is for the entire team so that users can quickly distribute information to project members.  However, they need to type the message body and any attachments in Outlook (at least I think so the way I am envisioning this).

So if I click on the Send Internal Email Button I want a new Outlook message to open with the To box filled out with all of our internal users on the project, and the subject preconfigured to the name of the project.  Email window stays open and user fills in the rest.

If I click on the Send External Email Button I want a new Outlook message to open with the To box filled out with all of our external users on the project.  All of our internal users (except the logged in user) on the CC line, and the subject preconfigured to the name of the project.  Email window stays open and user files in the rest.

So help on this??

SO much appreciated in advance!
APIs and custom code
Forms
NotificationsEmail
  • QuickBaseCoachD's avatar
    QuickBaseCoachD
    Qrew Captain
    6 years ago
    It�s all possible and the fastest way to get that working would be to book an hour with me. I can be found at www.QuickBaseCoach.com

    If your budget can only handle slow, we can also do this step by step in this forum but there will be a few techniques required to get all that to work, so it will take lots of baby steps to get it all working.

    But either way is ok with me.
  • JordanMcAlister's avatar
    JordanMcAlister
    Qrew Captain
    6 years ago
    Hey! Below is some of my code that I use for you to copy if you'd like. My URL formula button opens up an email in outlook with the "To" and "Subject" already filled in as well as some of the body based on some conditions.

    ______________________________________________________________________

    var text URLONE = "MailTo:emailaddress1"
    &
    If([District]="Longview",
    "; emailaddress2; emailaddress3",""
    )
    &"?cc= "
    &"&subject=" &
    If(
    [Time Frame]="Priority","Approved Priority Job WR ","Approved Job WR "
    )
    &[WR #]

    &"&body=WR "&[WR #] & " has been approved. Attached is the job packet" &
    If([District]="Longview",
    " and locate sheet." & "%0d%0a%0d%0a" & "CIR " & [Circuit] & " " & [Substation],"."
    )
    ;

    $URLONE
    ______________________________________________________________________

    My URL button with this code gives me this result when I click the button.




    So, for your case, I think you would need a text field that puts all the users in the project into the format of "email1; email2; email3; etc." and name it for example - [Project Email List].

    Your URL formula code might look like this:
    _____________________________________________________________________

    var text URLONE = "MailTo:" & [Project Email List]

    &"?cc= "
    &"&subject=" & [Project Name];

    $URLONE
    ______________________________________________________________________

    Then your users can fill out the rest, unless you want some sort of pre constructed body format.

    Hope this helps.
    • IvanWeiss's avatar
      IvanWeiss
      Qrew Captain
      6 years ago
      Okay so this helps A LOT and I appreciate the time to post this!

      Now what I am not sure of is how I can create that email list.....

      Is it an automation where I need to append to data in a field and add the email address with a semi colon?

      Or is it a formula and do I have it set to add the text strings together?

      But how do I access the email address from the user table for my variable?

      So I have (3) users in my app as a test

      Aaron Weiss
      John Brooks
      Ivan Weiss


      Lets say I am the "project designer" which is a field in my table and John Brooks is my "project estimator" which is a seperate field in my table.

      I have (3) other roles that are fields in my table but they are blank....

      How do I generate the email list for the two of us?
    • QuickBaseCoachD's avatar
      QuickBaseCoachD
      Qrew Captain
      6 years ago
      The field you would create in your Project record would be like

      List(";", 
      UserToEmail([Project designer userid field]),
      UserToEmail([Project estimator userid field]),
      UserToEmail([Project planner userid field]))

      That will provide a semi colon delimited list of email addresses.

    • QuickBaseCoachD's avatar
      QuickBaseCoachD
      Qrew Captain
      6 years ago
      .. a few other tips

      to introduce a carriage return use

      &"%0A%0A"

      The above will do two of them to create a new line with  as pace between the previous line.

      The other tip is that for any text in thew subject or body, you need to URLEncode because you are creating a URL and URLs do now allow for special characters.  So for example


      & "&subject=" & URLEncode( ..... the subject)

      & "&body=" & URLEncode( ..... the body)