How to populate email Subject from a mailto link or similar?

Hi,

I have a database holding records of individuals. Only administrators will update/create/delete records but they will be viewable externally via a URL link from a Facebook private group.

I would like to place a mailto link on each record which, when clicked, will send me an email using the users own device email client. This should show up as a clickable link e.g “Wrong/missing information? Email us!”

Using a description field I can get an email address to display as a link but there seems to be no way I can customise it to show a string instead of the address (and subsequently populate the Subject with the record ID and appropriate string).

I have looked at using Actions instead and I can get very close to what I require using the Send Custom Email but then there’s no way for a user to actually then enter or edit data in the email Body before it’s sent which defeats the object.

How might I add an easy way for viewers to email me about a problem with a record which also identifies the record in the Subject and what the sender suggests needs changing in the body of the email?

An alternative I thought about was to create another sheet for updates/amendments then use the a URL action to redirect to the add form for this sheet, however, I’m unable to work out the correct URL to take me to the ‘add’ form instead of the list view.

Any help/suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

The latter part of my question I’ve managed to work out the URL to get to the add new page.

https://www.ragic.com/A/B/C?new does the trick where A = youraccountname, B = tabname, C = sheet number.

So I could add a URL action button to get the user to input their amendments onto another sheet which I could then deal with, although I’m still missing how to pass the record ID to the new record.

I’d still prefer a simple email mailto approach populating Subject and body if possible.

Thanks.

Hi

Would you mind to test if emailing entries works for your use case?

Hi Angie,

Thanks for your response.

The emailing entries does not fit what I need, unfortunately. After clicking the action button, if the user could edit the body text before sending the email it would be exactly what I’m looking for.

:slight_smile:

Hi,

You can edit the body text, click the “content” box and you see that box will be in pink background. Then you can edit the text before you send the email.

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the suggestion however this doesn’t fit my use case.

I need the sender to be able to ONLY edit the body text because I want to have the subject and email address pre-set by me/admin.

Basically I need to have either;

  1. A link to an email form visible in each record so I can put something like “Contact us if this information is wrong” which takes the user to the email form, populates Subject with the record ID and where the user can state what is wrong in the Body, or
  2. An action button that does the same, or
  3. Some way of getting an action button to capture the Id of a record and then open the input (new) form of another sheet and pass the id into it instead of using an email form. That way I could manage the notifications from within Ragic, or
  4. Have Ragic parse a mailto link included in a record description field (so we can place it anywhere) which captures a record ID and where we (as admin) can set the Subject and Recipient which would then open the user’s email client and populate those email fields.

Other than the above, I can’t think of any other way to make it easy for users to tag a record and notify the admin in one step.

I’ve spent two days trying to do step 3 using Ragic javascript workflow functionality but can’t for the life of me work out how to do it (if indeed it is possible at all doing it that way).

Cheers

I am pleased to report I have worked out how to implement option 3 in my last message having discovered this guidance https://www.ragic.com/intl/en/doc/13/Embedding-on-your-website#5 which put me onto the right track.

I now have an action button on each record page which a user can click to notify us of errors/incorrect information on the record, or to submit further information connected to it. Excellent! :smile:

I will describe what I have done here in case it helps anyone else with similar a similar requirement:

I have a Records sheet with a field called ‘Records Link Title’ (field 1000337) which is a concatenation of a unique reference field and a Title field which makes the records easily identifiable on the listing page.

I have created a ‘Change/Update’ sheet to collate all update request submissions. It has (amongst others) a field called ‘Record to be Updated’ (field 000321).

On my Records sheet I have created an action button called ‘Submit a correction/update for this record’, Action type: URL
Action: https://www.ragic.com/MyAccount/register/31?new&pfv1000321={1000337}.

To explain the above URL, ‘MyAccount’ is obviously my account on Ragic. (You can get yours by looking at the page URL when you’re logged into Ragic.)

‘register’ is the name of the tab my sheets are kept under and ‘31’ the sheet number of my Change/Update sheet. (Again available from the sheet’s URL)

After the ‘?’, ‘new’ opens a blank form for the Change/Update sheet so the user can complete it.

Now the clever bit…

‘pfv1000321={1000337}’ means fill field reference 1000321 (this is the Record to be Updated field on the new form) with the value of field reference 1000337 (the Records Link Title field)

Save the action.

Remember to change permissions for your sheets and the actions button so users can properly access the sheets and action button.

Test.

Pressing the action button will open a new form prefilling its title field with the identity of the record to be changed. If this field is read-only the user will not be able to change it but they will be able to enter their reason for the change request in another field (and however many other fields you need them to).

If you need more than one field pre-populating just string the parameters together using ‘&’ between them e.g https://www.ragic.com/MyAccount/register/31?new&pfv1000321={1000337}&pfv1000789={1000543}

Easy when you know the answer!

Cheers

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