Button to Send Group Email

[dsvare]

Hello,

I'm guessing this is a pretty simplistic question, but I'm looking to send an email to a group of individuals. 

About the app:

I have two tables - One is a list of all team members "Team" (a directory) and the other is a list of managers "Managers". 

It's a very simplistic app - just meant to act as a company directory. However, I want to build in some additional useful functionality for the team. 

There are three lines of business "LOB 1", "LOB 2", "LOB 3". 

I have split the three LOBs using the slice function.

Now, what I envision is the ability to click a button "Send Team Email". Then, they would either get the option of selecting (from a dropdown) which group they'd like (LOB 1 / LOB 2 / LOB 3 / ALL) and they'd then be prompted to complete the email.

Or, if that's far to complicated - Just click the "Team Email" button and it creates a blank email to all email addresses on the "Team" table. 

The problem I continue to run into is that the buttons are specific to a row. Again, this is probably something simple that I'm missing.

Thank you! 

[Steve]

Where do you want the button displayed?

[dsvare]

Ideally one of two places:

1) Left-hand menu

2) While looking at the "Team" table (but not as a single-row action/button like you see by default) 

Thanks Steve!

[Steve]

There's no way to include an action button in the main menu (the "left-hand menu"). You could include a (form) view, however, which may be sufficient?

In a table (or deck or gallery) view, you can display an overlay button of type App: go to another view in this app, which could take the user to a form view.

[dsvare]

Then, from that form view I could have information populated. I assume into a third table to use a bot to send the email after the fact? (I assume the information from the form needs to be saved somewhere in order to be used in a message after)

Or, is there another way that I'm not aware of to use a form to go directly to drafting an email?

Thank you!

[Steve]

What interface do you want to give the user? You could use a Form Saved event action to perform an action of type External: start an email; or you could setup a bot to respond to the row added by the form and send an email that way. Depends on what you want.

[dsvare]

I was hoping that it'd open the user's email client like the default email button does. The only shortcoming of that method was that it could only be used for a single row (or a single email address). 

If it's possible to do that same thing - but instead open up the email client with the selection of recipients that'd be ideal.

If that's not possible then I think your method would work - I could also use a "messages" table to provide the user's access to their previously sent or received emails (I believe I saw a template example that did something similar to this). 

Thanks again!

[Steve]

I don't have any experience with External: start an email. Have you tried giving it multiple recipient addresses?

[dsvare]

I have, but it doesn't seem like it wants to allow it to be an action for anything besides a single row. 

If I try to make it pull a list of the email addresses on the "Team" table it says that it returns a list and can't use that.

It also doesn't allow the button to appear anywhere besides within each row individually instead of overlaid on the table.