Every 10 minutes
Require two approvals for Airtable change requests
Each new change request in Airtable is emailed to two approvers, and the change is applied only after both say yes.
- Runs
- Every 10 minutes
- Apps
- Airtable, Gmail
- AI
- Not needed
- Access
- Airtable read+write; Gmail gmail.send
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: when a change request is added in Airtable, email two approvers approve/reject links and apply it once both approve.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
A finance team keeps supplier bank details and price lists in Airtable. Anyone can request a change, but a wrong bank account number or a mistyped price can cost real money. Their policy says two people must approve every change, which in practice means chasing colleagues on chat and hoping someone remembered to check.
This automation enforces the four-eyes rule for them. Each request goes to two approvers by email, and nothing changes in Airtable until both have approved it.
What you get out of it
Mistakes are caught before they cost money
A second pair of eyes on bank details and prices stops typos and fraudulent requests from going live.
Approvals without logging in
Approvers click approve or reject in an email, so they can respond from their phone in seconds.
A clear audit trail
Each request records who approved or rejected it and when, which is what auditors and accountants want to see.
Changes apply on their own
Once both approvals are in, the change is made in Airtable straight away, with no one needing to remember to do it.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Every few minutes ClickRuntime checks your Airtable change requests table for new requests.
It skips any request it has already sent for approval.
It emails both approvers from your Gmail with an approve and a reject link.
Each click is recorded on the request in Airtable.
Once both have approved, it applies the change to the target record and marks the request Applied.
Before it runs live
- Connect Airtable
- Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.
Changes you can ask for
- Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
- Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
- Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
- Combine it with other Airtable and Gmail steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
import base64, hashlib, hmac
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from clickruntime import on_trigger, on_event, credentials, http, report_fetched
BASE = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/your-base-id"
APPROVERS = ["finance.lead@example.com", "ops.lead@example.com"]
LINK = "https://your-trigger-link"
def send(gmail, to, subject, text, thread=None):
msg = MIMEText(text)
msg["to"], msg["subject"] = to, subject
body = {"raw": base64.urlsafe_b64encode(msg.as_bytes()).decode()}
if thread:
body["threadId"] = thread
gmail.users().messages().send(userId="me", body=body).execute()
def sig(rid, who, vote):
return hmac.new(credentials.secret("APPROVAL_SIGNING_KEY").encode(), f"{rid}|{who}|{vote}".encode(), hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
@on_trigger
def run(event):
h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('AIRTABLE_API_KEY')}"}
reqs = http.get(f"{BASE}/Requests", headers=h, params={"filterByFormula": "{Status}='New'"}).json()["records"]
report_fetched(len(reqs))
if not reqs:
return {"new": 0}
gmail = build("gmail", "v1", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
for r in reqs:
for who in APPROVERS:
links = "\n".join(f"{v}: {LINK}?id={r['id']}&who={who}&vote={v}&sig={sig(r['id'], who, v)}" for v in ("approve", "reject"))
send(gmail, who, f"Approve change: {r['fields']['Summary']}", links)
http.patch(f"{BASE}/Requests/{r['id']}", headers=h, json={"fields": {"Status": "Pending"}})
return {"sent": len(reqs)}FAQ
Common questions
What happens if one approver rejects?
Can the person requesting the change approve it?
Can the approval links be forged or reused?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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