Automated emails pulling email address from within the sheet

Loukas W

I have a form that people fill out to request access to a system, and I automate the sending of an email to a specific address that is filled out on the form. A solution I found through this forum sounded like it might work, but it advised to make a separate reference sheet with all potential Contacts, which is not feasible. This list would require constant updating, as the list of employees I want to send the automated email to would be constantly changing (I want the email to go to a GM of a specific location, and the GMs change over time). I can automate the email sending, but in the automation task, it only gives me a list of people that sheets have been shared with. Is there a way to simply pull an email address from a cell, and customize the message that it sends to include specific sheet information? The information would all be in the same row.

I would want the automated email to read something like this:

"Dear {{GM Email}},

You are receiving this notification because {{Person who filled out form}} is requesting access to ____ system on behalf of {{Future System User}}. This requires your approval. Please respond to this email approving or denying this request within 3 business days."

It would be ideal if they could either A) respond directly to the automated email with approved or denied, and then that answer could be added to a separate column (ie, "GM Approve/Deny"), or B) click on a Approve/Deny radio button in the email, and it gets tracked to the column listed previously.

This is probably alot to ask of Smartsheet, but anyone have any ideas? Can this even be done?

Paul Newcome

If you are capturing the email address in the sheet, then you should be able to set up your automation to send to the contact in that field.

It also sounds like you want to use an Approval Request automation.

Loukas W

Thanks for the help Paul, I set it up and after a couple tries, got it to work great! I did want to ask a follow up question.

Is there a way to change the sender email address? When the approval request gets sent, it shows as from "myname via Smartsheet". Is there a way to change that to something else? Or would I need to set up a separate user account? I don't want the email to come from "me", I want to come from my department.

Paul Newcome

You would need to set up a separate account and have that account own the sheet and automations.

XavierM

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/359184#Comment_359184

@Loukas W - attempting to do the same thing and would appreciate if you would share how you accomplished sending out an email using the email address in a column. All others keep referring to needing a contact list. Thank you so much in advance.

Paul Newcome

@XavierM Yes. You need the email address for the recipient to be in a contact type column.