How to Automate mail merge for emails

1 Start with a subject

Type ‘ask’ in the search bar (top left), and drag Ask for Input from the results into the pane on the right. Set the question to ‘What’s your message’s subject?’ Leave the answer empty, and set the input type to Text.

2 Set the body

Add a second Ask for Input action below the existing one. Set its question to ‘What is its body (without greeting/ sign-off)?’ and the answer and input type as before. It’s correct that no data is passed down to this action.

3 Select pic & people

Find the Select Photos action and add it at the bottom of the workflow. Our example allows attachment of one image. Find and add the Select Contact action, again at the bottom, and allow multiple people to be selected.

4A safety check

Before constructing the email, we should check whether contacts selected in the previous action have no email address. Add the Find Contacts action below the others; we’ll use it to filter out those inappropriate contacts.

5 Filter contacts

A line tells you this gets contacts from the previous action. Tap Add Filter, then tap Group and pick Email Address, change ‘is’ to ‘contains,’ and replace ‘anything’ with ‘@’. People with no email address will be discarded for now.

6 Repeat action

Next, add a ‘Repeat with Each’ action. Between the two bars this adds to the workflow, you’ll use several actions to send the same overall message, yet personalised, repeating until all contacts have been sent one.

7 Get the addresses

Note the line between the actions, from Select Contact all the way into the Repeat loop: each time the Repeat loop begins, it will take a new contact from those passed to it. Add ‘Get Email Addresses from Input’ to the loop.

8 Multiple addresses

The items we have now are all the email addresses stored for the contact currently being dealt with. We want just one, and to pick which to use if a person has more than one. Add a Count action within the loop, and set it to count items.

9 Check for multiples

Add an If action next in line. Doing so adds bars labelled If, Otherwise, and End If to the workflow. In the first, set the condition to check if the received number is greater than 1. If so, you’ll need to perform an extra action to offer a choice.