Gmail

Send emails from your own Gmail account

Gmail is an email platform for workplace communication and an integral part of Google Workspace. When emails are a critical part of your workflow, trigger emails from within your Glide app with Gide’s Gmail Integration.

Sending an email from an app.

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Adding and Configuring the Integration

  1. In Glide, click the Settings icon in the upper-right corner.

  2. Click the Integrations tab and then select Gmail.

  3. Select Add

  4. Sign into your Google Workspace account and select Allow to approve the integration.

  5. Once Glide has access to your Gmail account, you will be able to send emails from your Glide app.

Send Email with Gmail

The Send Email with Gmail action allows you to send an email from your own Gmail account.

Input, output & required fields

The Send Email with Gmail action allows you to trigger an email send-out via Gmail from within your Glide app. Like any email send-out, the recipients’ email addresses, a subject line, and a body of text are required, whereas cc and bcc recipients are optional. The output of the Send Email with Gmail action is a sent email, and from the recipients’ perspective, the email will seem to come from Gmail.

Multiple Recipients

You can address the email to multiple recipients by separating email addresses

This approach applies to the To, Cc, and Bcc fields.

Using a Joined List or a Lookup Column for multiple recipients.

Setting up the Send Email with Gmail action

In the Data Editor

To create dynamic emails, it's best to make sure your data table is set up before you start configuring your action. The data for the fields To, Cc, Bcc, Subject, and Body, therefore, needs to be available in one of the following:

  • the table shared by the screen and action

  • the User Profile table

  • special values that are the current date/time, unique identifier, user’s email address, or link to the current screen

Columns such as text, template, or single value are well suited to generate the subject line and body of the email. If the Body field points to an image column, the email received will display the URL of the location of the image.

  • Recipient fields (To, Cc, Bcc): create columns that will house email addresses. These could be basic text, a joined list, a split text, or array columns.

  • Subject line: a text or template column.

  • Body: a text or template column.

Body vs Body HTML

The Body field will accept plain text whereas the Body HTML supports HTML tags. The Body HTML field overrides the Body field and allows you to send emails with more advanced formatting, including images, different fonts, types, colors, etc.

In the Action Editor

  1. Select the plus symbol or the + New Action button.

  2. Select which source data to use for the email to be generated.

  3. Select a column to source the To field or input custom values manually.

    • optionally, add recipients to cc and/or bcc.

  4. Select a column to source the Subject field or input a custom value manually.

  5. Select a column to source the Body field or input a custom value manually.

    • If you'd like, you can use HTML to create a more visual email body.

In the Layout Editor

The Send Email with Gmail action can be associated with any component that supports actions or triggered upon a form submission. Importantly, the action can be triggered from any screen as long as the action and screen share the same table as the data source.

The action is configured the same way whether you set it up in the action editor or the layout editor.

PIN Emails from Gmail

In App Settings, you can enable sending PIN emails through a Gmail account instead of through Glide's default email service. To enable this, you must first set up the Gmail integration in the app.

This feature is currently in preview mode. To use it, first enable it in the team settings.

  1. From the team Dashboard, select Settings.

  2. Enable Pins via integrations.

  3. Navigate to the Apps dashboard and select the app you want to add Gmail PINs to.

  4. If you have not yet connected a Gmail account, go to the App Settings.

  5. In Users and Authentication, find Pin emails from Gmail and select Connect.

  6. On the Gmail configuration screen, select Add to app.

  7. A new tab or window will open with the Gmail authentication screen. Choose which account to connect with Glide.

  8. Select Continue.

  9. Grant access to send email on your behalf.

  10. Select Continue.

  11. In Glide, go back to the Users & Authentication settings.

  12. Enable the Pin email from Gmail toggle.

Example: Send inventory in a CSV file via email

In this example, fieldworkers update warehouse inventory in their Glide app. From within the app, let’s allow them to send an email with the new list of items in a CSV file, allowing other teams to update their systems.

To set up this workflow with the Generate CSV and Gmail integrations, you will likely want to include the following steps:

  1. Build a screen with your inventory with the ability to add, edit and delete inventory items.

  2. Create a Generate CSV custom action.

  3. Create a Send Email via Gmail custom action.

  4. Add the Generate CSV and Send Email via Gmail actions to the screen.

Build a screen with your inventory with the ability to add, edit and delete inventory items

  1. In the Data Editor: Create a single-row screen table.

  2. In the Layout Editor: Create a custom screen with the single-row screen table as the data source.

  3. Add a collection component with the warehouse inventory, using the table with the inventory data as the source. Include the ability to add, edit and delete inventory items.

Create a Generate CSV custom action

  1. In the Data Editor: Add a basic URL column to the single-row screen table.

  2. In the Actions Editor: Create a custom action associated with the single-row screen table.

  3. Add the Generate CSV action.

  4. Set the source data to the table with the inventory and the file output to the Generate CSV URL column in the single-row screen table.

Create a Send Email via Gmail custom action

In the Data Editor:

  1. In the single-row screen table, create 5 columns to house information for the To, Cc, Bcc, Subject, and Body fields.

  2. Emails: If they will always remain the same, you can input the comma-separated list of email addresses directly into basic text columns. Basic text columns will also be used if associated with a choice component. Alternatively, create basic boolean and if-the-else columns in the Users table to indicate who will be a recipient, and use a Lookup or Joined List column in the single-row screen table to generate an array or comma-separated list of recipient email addresses.

  3. Subject line: The subject of the email can be fixed, or use a Template column to include a date.

  4. Body: For the body of the email, use a Template column to include the URL of the inventory CSV.

In the Action Editor:

  1. Create a custom action associated with the single-row screen table.

  2. Add the Send Email with Gmail action.

  3. Set the To, Subject, and Body fields to their respective columns in the single-row screen table.

    • Optionally, include a Show Notification action to enhance the user experience.

Add the Generate CSV and Send Email via Gmail actions to the screen

In the Layout Editor, add components the user will interact with to trigger the Generate CSV and Send Email actions. Here, we placed two button components inside a container at the top of the screen.

In the Layout Editor, add components the user will interact with to trigger the Generate CSV and Send Email actions.

The Generate CSV button triggers the generation of the CSV file and populates the table with the URL.

The Send CSV button shows a new screen whose data source is the same single-row screen table by selecting “This item”. On the new screen, add a checklist collection whose data source is the Users table. Checking names in this collection populates true values in the CSV Recipients column in the Users table, which in turn populates the array or comma-separated list of recipient emails in the single-row screen table. Below the collection, add a button that will trigger the Send Email with Gmail custom action.

The final send CSV workflow in an app.

To learn more generally about Integrations in Glide, including how they affect your app’s usage, check out our Introduction to Integrations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have a question about Gmail? Ask the Glide community.

Updated more than a week ago
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