Allow Notifications to be Sent to Users via Related Row Lookup

With Automations you can send a notification to groups of users if you have a User data type column with one or more users. This I’ve tested and it works. You can also send messages via integrations with MS Teams, Slack, and MailChimp (which I have not tested because I don’t use these). What I would like to do is define my own groups of users so that I can choose the group (or list) rather than having to choose each individual user for each event notification.

In the following example, I have a meeting schedule worksheet shared with a bunch of different users. In the Groups worksheet I have a couple of groups defined with a User column where I choose which users are in that group.

The Schedule worksheet is where I’ve listed various meetings, events, or reminders. The NOTIFICATION GROUP column is a related row column where I choose which group should get the reminder or notification. The GROUP USERS column is a related row lookup.

I was hoping that in the Automation, I would be able to choose the GROUP USERS column, but as shown in the screenshot below, it looks like that isn’t possible (I tried both a 1-way and 2-way related row).

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I thought that this would work because the related row lookup is returning the values from a User column. Would be nice if the Automations feature could let you choose the related row lookup column if it is referencing a User data type.

For reference, here is the notification:
image

Makes sense. Right now we are not ‘inferring the type’ of a RR Lookups ( and Rollups that we are preparing to release). While inferring type etc ( basically loosely typed behaviour) will unleash tremendous power - it could also likely lead to hard-to-detect errors - something that can be alleviated by advanced tooling around error logging and validation of automations.

Will consider this; please watch this space for further updates.

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