VERSION 2: Automate Reminder Emails for Upcoming Games

Category: Advice for Coaches

Do we have a game this weekend? What time is the game? Where is the game again? Yeah it gets annoying pretty quickly. What if there was a way to remind players and parents about an upcoming game without having to remember to click Send each week? With this article, you’ll learn how! This is an update to our previous article Automate Reminder Emails for Upcoming Games which makes it even easier!

Step One

First, we need a schedule of games and a list of email addresses who wish to receive email reminders. Let’s use Google Drive, which provides features such as presentations, documents, and you guessed it, spreadsheets. Why use this? Well it’s available to you from anywhere if you have an internet connection and best of all it’s FREE! If you have a Google account already, that’s great. If not, sign up for a Google account with your preferred email address. You don’t actually need a Google email address.

Step Two

Automate Reminder Emails Step 2

Guess what? To make it easier, I already created the spreadsheet for you! You can view the spreadsheet even if you’re not signed in to Google Drive. But we want to make a copy of the spreadsheet, so sign in and then access the Schedule/Roster spreadsheet.

Choose File > Make a copy. Define a name for your spreadsheet and click Ok.

Step Three

Automate Reminder Emails Step 3

The spreadsheet will open, which has now been copied to your drive. There are two sheets. The first one is called Schedule. The second one is called Roster. Take some time to fill out your schedule and roster details. The email addresses defined on the Roster sheet will receive the reminder email.

Do not change the name of these sheets or the order of the columns. If you do, the email functionality will not work.

Step Four

Version 2: Automate Reminder Emails Step 4

Once you’re done setting up your schedule and roster information, you’re now ready to define when the email should be generated. The email script is set up primarily for weekly games. Let’s say your games are on Sundays. Then I would want the email to be generated at the beginning of the week. How about Monday? This should allow enough time for players or parents to contact you if they will not be able to make the upcoming game.

There’s an Email menu option available. Choose Email and you’ll see the days of the week are available. Select Monday.

You will receive a pop up window asking you to authorize the script to run. Click Ok. You will see a screen stating you can now run the script. Click Close. Choose the Email menu again and select Monday.  You have now set the email to be sent every Monday!

If, in the future, you need to change when the email is sent, just choose the Email menu again and select a different day of the week!

What does the email look like?

Automate Reminder Email Example

You’ve defined your schedule, your roster, and set up the day the email will be sent. An email will be sent every Monday morning if the game date is within a week. You can see an example of what the email will look like in the above screen shot.

  • The subject of the email includes the upcoming game date, time, and field name.
  • The content of the email includes the upcoming game date, time, field name, and field address.
  • Clicking the field address will bring you to Google Maps to make it easier to get directions.
  • The entire schedule is included at the bottom of the email.

You have now set up automated email reminders for your team! Sit back, relax, and enjoy! Don’t forget to share this with your fellow coaches!