Automated Message Response to Form Completion

brianw

I have a form that has a fair amount of branching in it with multiple columns and I have my automation setup to email for approval when a new line is created. My problem is with all the branching the form that is emailed has a lot of blank sections. Is there a way to only include the columns with data?

I see the automation options to include specific fields, but i dont necessarily know what fields will be populated based on how the questions are answered.

thanks for the help!

Paul Newcome

My suggestion would be to insert a helper column (or series of helper columns) that will basically pull together the non-blanks. Then you can reference these columns using {{placeholders}} in the automated email.

Paul Newcome

My suggestion would be to insert a helper column (or series of helper columns) that will basically pull together the non-blanks. Then you can reference these columns using {{placeholders}} in the automated email.

brianw

Thanks Paul! That definitely makes sense. How would I consolidate the various columns into one helper cell? For example I have 14 columns that could have data in them. Only 1 of them will ever actually will have anything populated, but it could be 2 options. So theoretically I could have 1 column with 2 different selections.

brianw

I got it to work simply using join()! Thanks for the help. I forget about the power of helper columns.

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️

And sorry about that. I actually meant (but forgot to) post the JOIN formula example.