An automation action is a step that performs a task, activity, event, or change. Think of a action as:

When Something happens (the Trigger) and These Conditions are true, then This Event (the Action) occurs.

SmartSuite's Send an Email action for Google Gmail allow you to send email via your own Gmail account. If you haven't already, we also recommend that you check our our articles on creating an automation and managing automations for more information about setting up new workflows.

To use Google Email you will need to have an existing Gmail account. Gmail actions are part of SmartSuite's automations system, which all account types have access to. Simply click the Automations option in the Solution drop-down menu (see image below).

Note

This action requires Solution Manager permissions or the Administrator role. To learn more, please see our article on roles and permissions.

Accessing the Automations configuration interface:

Once the Solution Automations dialog is displayed, click Add Automation to begin creating an automation that will interact with Gmail.

You will need to set up a trigger to tell the Automation when to run and which record to use as the source of data for your Google Email action.

For example, you might be tracking user-submitted help requests in SmartSuite. If you wanted to send email when a bug is created, you would select a When a Record is Created trigger to initiate the automation when the SmartSuite record is added.

After creating your automation and selecting your Trigger, you can select Google Gmail from the Integrations section of the Add Actions list. You can then select the Send an Email action. It looks like this:
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Whenever your automation trigger fires and the conditions are met, the Google Gmail send an email action will send an email from the configured account. Configuring it just requires a few clicks.

You will be prompted to select or connect your Outlook account. Click on the Add new Google Gmail credential option to link an account. Alternatively you can select an account you have already connected.

If you are not authenticated you will be prompted to log in to your Outlook account. Click the Continue button to authorize.

After this initial account configuration has been completed, you can then specify the details for the email you want to create. Customizable fields include:
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You can add either static values to each of these fields, or map values from the triggering record as their value. Continue adding fields until you have populated everything you need in the issue that will be created in your Gmail message.

When you're done, click Save Automation at the bottom-right corner of the screen to save the automation and its configuration. Note that you can customize the name of the Email action by clicking on the dotted box at the top of the automation.

Note

You will be prompted to switch the automation on. If you click Yes, switch it on the automation will be active and will trigger when its criteria are met. You can also choose to keep it off if you're not yet ready to start sending email from your Gmail account.

We're confident that in most cases your Google automations will be easy and straightforward to configure. However, under certain circumstances you might see error messages that are specific to the permissions required for the automation to run properly. We've outlined the most common scenarios below.

Most of the issues that users experience have to do with not granting the correct permissions when authenticating with Google:

1. Action Fail: Request had insufficient authentication scopes

This error is displayed if you did not mark the checkbox to allow SmartSuite to send emails. The checkbox looks like this:

2. Action Fail: Token has been expired or revoked

If permissions were granted initially but permission was later removed you may see this error. Permissions can be revoked in a number of ways - by the user or by a Google admin.

3. Invalid Credentials

If Google credentials are deleted but the automation is still enabled you will see this error, indicating that there are no valid credentials with which to execute the automation.

The easiest way to fix any of these permissions-related issues is to:

Doing this should resolve nearly every permissions-related problem. If you have done this and still have problems with your automation, please reach out to our support team via Intercom or email (support@smartsuite.com)