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I have a sample of participants who visit the lab for data collection. I have a Google Sheet that contains columns for participant emails, visit completed (yes or no), and the date of their visit. My goal is to trigger zaps to send emails to participants 5 months after their visits. My current model tries to use Schedule by Zapier to trigger a process to once daily examine a Google Sheet and only send a message to participants whose Visit Completion date is 5 months prior to today’s date. This attempt uses Schedule by Zapier (to set a once daily trigger) > Google Sheets (Lookup Spreadsheet Row) > Formatter (To format the date as + 5 months) > Filter by Zapier (To match the output date from formatter to today’s date {{zap_meta_human_now}}). One issue with this method is that it seems that the today’s date timestamp contains date + time and will not match the output date from formatter, which contains only date. 

I’m not using Delay because this could produce errors if the date is entered retrospectively or if it is entered incorrectly and then later changed. 

Does anyone know a remedy or a more efficient way to achieve this goal? 

 

Thanks in advance.
 

Hi there @Skwrl,

Welcome to the Community! 🎉

​At this time, Zaps cannot hold Tasks for longer than 1 month, so you will be unable to set the "Delay For" Action to delay for more than 4 weeks. This is mentioned briefly here:

https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496288754829-Add-delays-to-Zaps#h_01H9169CQWHB8KSPVCFSJ52EYZ

​To get around this, and make sure that your Zap will work as intended, one option is to use the Google Calendar integration's "New Event Start" Trigger for long delays:

https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8495966760845-Google-Calendar-Tips-Tricks#use-google-calendars-new-event-start-trigger-to-create-a-long-delay

​Using that Trigger, you would split your Zap into two or more Zaps. The first Zap consists of your usual trigger, and the Google Calendar "Create Event" action, rather than multiple "Delay For" steps. Then, you would want to create one or more Zaps with the "New Event Start" Trigger, which would fire when the previous Zap's created events occur.

Hopefully, this helps.


Hi @Skwrl! 👋

Just checking in here to ask how you got on with the workaround Ken suggested, did it do the trick? 

If it did, we’d love to get that marked as the best answer to help surface it to other Community members.

And if not, or you’re still stuck at all do let us know, we’re happy to help further!