Select specific person/email as the name for automated alerts

System

This idea was created from comments split from: From email name for Smartsheet automations: select a generic value versus owner.

While the current functionality of automated workflows enables the creator of the workflow to select if the email should come from a generic label (such as either Smartsheet Automations or their Organization), this specific idea is to select a different person/account as the name that appears with that email alert.

bradrtn

As a Smartsheet user, it’d be helpful if I could send workflow alerts (like update requests, etc) from my email address (instead of a smartsheet email address), so that recipients will more easily recognize me as the sender and it’s more of a personal email-oriented communication.

Ryan Sides

Hey @bradrtn

I created a solution that would do just that because we were emailing external customers from Smartsheet and it was causing confusion. You can include attachments as actual attachments in the email, include links and formatting. It's an app that connects to Smartsheet. If you'd like to try it out, please let me know Ryan@WorkflowCreative.com

bradrtn

Hi Ryan, thanks for taking the time to reply. That sounds great! I would like to try it out.

My email address is brad@healingproductivity.com. It’d be great to connect. 👍

Stacey Carrasco

We are having this issue as well and agree with @bradrtn idea. Most of our emails that are sent via Smartsheet are getting filter out in spam or junk and so many of our outside partners are not receiving our notifications and it's causing frustration. Team members are considering going back to manual emails which I'm strongly against moving in that direction. 🤨

@Ryan Sides I'll email you see what works for this

Sophie C

Hi @Genevieve P. ,

Thank you for the info. I can see the update still does't allow users to free type a specific email address to set as the from/reply to email.

Its restricted to 'triggering user' or 'organisation' if we want it to be somewhat personalised, however it'll still default to the sheet owner if there's more than a single trigger, which is really common if theirs multiple users on a sheet.

Will there ever be the opportunity to manually input an email address ourselves?

Thanks

AmandaWebb

Yeah, this isn't what we asked for.

I mean, it is better than what we had before, and a step in the right direction...

It should at least alleviate unaffiliated individuals from getting responses on tasks they know nothing about.

But we really need to be able to SET this information. That's still not possible.

This shouldn't be presented as if it is what we asked for because it's not. This is a compromise at best.

katheride

Unfortunately, the proffered solution only only changes who is listed as sending the email. The email headers still include a Reply-To field for the sheet owner. This addresses the concern of Smartsheet notifications looking like spam but does not really help the original issue of people responding to the sheet owner and not the right people in the organization. We need the ability to specify the reply-to address.

ronhay

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/394447#Comment_394447

Completely agree. Reply-to should be customizable in the workflow alert. As the Control Center program owner, I get tons of replies to project automations for projects I have nothing to do with other than managing the underlying templates and provisioning.

TiffanyG

Hi @Genevieve P. ,

Our team is still looking for the same updates that Sophie C. and Katheride mentioned.

1) We need the ability to specify what email address an automated email comes from.

2) The email headers still include a Reply-To field for the sheet owner, but we would like it to be updated to the user the email address that we choose instead.

Can you let us know if there's been any updates towards this?

Patrick Roach

I agree with a number of other commenters here. What we need is to be able to set a specific email address as the FROM address for automated emails. For example, if a specific person is responsible for a workflow in a sheet that I'm developing, I want to be able to say that the automated emails need to come from them in the From line.

We need an option where we can type an address into a field and designate that email as the "From" address.

LeslieW

I also agree with many of the comments in this thread, as summarized in the above couple of posts. This continues to be a pain point for our company as well.

Genevieve P.

Hi all,

I have moved your comments from the other Idea as that initial idea has been released and is available. This new post is able to gather votes for this specific feature: that email alerts can be set as coming from someone else.

Thank you!

Genevieve

Annw99

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/415124#Comment_415124

I agree with all the above requirements, with two additional points:

1) we need to be able to specify a specific email for the automated email to come from, but also we should be able to choose any field in the sheet that contains an email address

2) with Forms, even where I say "send from triggering user", it sends the email from me as the creator of the form. Can that be fixed?

Jeff Reisman

Hi @Genevieve P. Thanks for initiating this thread. We are very much in need of this functionality. Phase 1 was a nice first step, but fell very short of the functionality we all were hoping for.

As our Smartsheet SME, I build a lot of sheets/workspaces/solutions for other functional areas. Many of them have no need for a licensed user, or the solution is complicated and needs me to be able to retain full control, so I have retained ownership. Under the current functionality, this results in a lot of replies coming to me that I don't need, and in some cases, makes extra work for me.

One example is our Logistics group. I own their Help Ticket system. Their tickets get sent automatically to their team address. Many times a day they want to communicate their response to a notification to others in the dept, but instead of forwarding the email back to the team email address, they hit reply and add the team email. If I could set the reply-to address to be the Logistics Dept's name and Team email, they could just reply to the email - saving them from having to enter an address, and saving me from getting a lot of email that has nothing to do with me.

This is also relevent for notifications to external users. Our Training dept has many such notifications every day. It doesn't matter that the subject line and email body contain "*** DO NOT REPLY ***" and "Contact TrainingDept@mycompany.com with any questions," at least a few a week just reply to the notification email, which then necessitates action on my part to forward to the Training Dept admins. Having the notifications come from "METUS Technical Training" with the Training Dept's team email address as the reply-to would save everybody time and effort and appear more professional as well.

This would also make our notifications more precise, in that external collaborators would know by the sender name exactly which dept was sending them the notification: METUS Accounts Payable, METUS Technical Training, METUS Order Management, etc., rather than just generically Automation at Smartsheet.com or just Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US.

We are eagerly awaiting Phase 2! Let's make this happen!

Jeff Reisman

Everyone who has commented on this thread - be sure to up vote it and encourage others to do so as well. 😀