Forum Discussion

VW's avatar
VW
Qrew Trainee
2 years ago

Fields - Multiple choice for emails

Hello - 
I'm creating a form and two of the fields in the form is manager name and manager email.  From there, I'd like to create an automated email that sends to the manager's email when a new form is submitted.  From what I understand, the field format would have to be "email" in order to send an automated email.  Is there a way to create a multiple choice drop down for email addresses instead of text?  I'm trying to avoid mistakes by having people type in email addresses.  

I'm also trying to not link to a table since our company has thousands of managers and we don't want to have to maintain that data.  It would be best if we could have a handful of selected managers to choose from, with the ability for the person entering it to add a new manager as they need (like the multiple choice text field allows).

Thank you

------------------------------
Valerie Wong
------------------------------

3 Replies

Sort By
  • MarkShnier__You's avatar
    MarkShnier__You
    Qrew #1 Challenger
    2 years ago
    I suggest making a table of Managers where the Key field is the email address and another field for their name.  Then make a relationship where One Manager has many "Form records".

    You can populate the Managers table with a few good choices and allow,  through permissions,  your users to add Managers or flag Managers as being inactive in the Managers table. The advantages of having a table versus a down and dirty multiple-choice field is that if mistakes get entered into a multiple choice field or a manager is no longer valid to be chosen there's no way for these regular empowered users to correct that error. Whereas if you have trusted users  they can keep that table tidy and relevant at all times. 

    Because you don't ever want to really delete manager records I suggest having a checkbox to indicate whether the manager record is active. Then on the form where the manager is being selected through the relationship you were used to report for this filter to include active managers only.

    ------------------------------
    Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
    ------------------------------
    • VW's avatar
      VW
      Qrew Trainee
      2 years ago
      Are reminder emails only for people that have access to the app?  Or is it possible to send reminders to an open email that was entered in the form?

      Thank you

      ------------------------------
      Valerie Wong
      ------------------------------
      • MarkShnier__You's avatar
        MarkShnier__You
        Qrew #1 Challenger
        2 years ago
        There are two types of email Notifications, and the Type called

        "Open" can go to any email address.

        But both Reminders and Subscriptions can only go to Users in an application.  

        If you do need to somehow sort of trick the system into sending emails to non-users then one way to do that is to make a pipeline which will scan the records for emails that need to be sent an update some trigger field like the current date time in order to trickles the Open email notification.

        But if you are very new to QuickBase, setting up that pipeline will be a little bit of a learning curve.

        ------------------------------
        Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
        mark.shnier@gmail.com
        ------------------------------