Smartsheet Automation Sender/Reply-To email causing confusion

Vivien Chong

With reference to the above, I have recently tested the automation and it doesn't seem in-line with the above.

I am the sheet owner, I created the workflow, but whether single user or multiple users who triggered the alert, it is showing my name as the sender. And there also inconsistencies at times which we do not understand how it actually work.

1) If it is a single user triggering the alert, shouldn't it display them as the notification sender instead of me?

2) We have an incident where single user triggered the alert, but sheet owner's name was shown as sender.

3) Another incident where 1 user triggered multiple alert, but this user's name is shown as sender.

Are there inconsistencies or some determining factor that I have missed out?

Genevieve P.

Hi @Vivien Chong

For your scenarios 1 & 2, do you have any sort of timing on the alert other than "trigger immediately"? If there's a timeframe (e.g. "hourly") then it will come from the Sheet Owner instead.

For scenario 3, if the same user triggers multiple rows and the alert is set to trigger immediately, then yes, this should come from the person making the changes.

If you're experiencing something different, can you post screen captures of your workflow set-up with the different blocks showing (but redact sensitive information)?

Thanks,

Genevieve

Vivien Chong

Hi @Genevieve P.

Scenario 1 & 2: it is set to when triggered. This is the workflow:

When we test this with just 1 trigger by a single user, it is showing the Sheet Owner as the sender instead of the person triggering it. After testing the same workflow for a few times, we find that sometimes the sender shown is the single user. Same workflow, same trigger by the same person, but Sender name is different.

The consistency is very important as we need to know how to set up the workflow so it make sense to the recipient who is sending them the notification.

For scenario 3, you mentioned that if the same user triggers multiple rows and the alert is set to trigger immediately, then this should come from the person making the changes. Again, after doing a few tests, we find that sometimes, the person making the changes is shown as the sender, sometimes, it's showing the Sheet owner.

In all scenarios above, we are sending the notification to the same recipient, whether single trigger or multiple triggers.

We are trying to understand how it works and why it is not showing consistency when we conduct multiple tests.

Any advice and assistance is appreciated!

Genevieve P.

Hi @Vivien Chong

What you're describing does sound unexpected / inconsistent. I'm unable to replicate it as my automations seem to be in keeping with the Help documentation; the sheet owner only shows if the workflow is triggered in a way that makes the person who triggered it unclear (e.g. multiple users, or time based).

Do you have any formulas in the sheet that could be confusing the worfklow in regards to what changes were made, or who made them?

I will note that the sender name for automations is under review and there should be an update to this soon - see this Product Idea & status. I would expect that the new release to come will sort out any of these inconsistencies.

Vivien Chong

Hi @Genevieve P. , thanks for following up on this issue.

As shown, the trigger is simple, without formula.

We have another team testing on this in a different sheet and it shows inconsistency as well.

In a number of instances, when we expected it to show Sheet Owner as sender, it is showing the person triggering it, and vice versa.

When recipients receiving the notification, the "sender" is confusing to them and when they reply to the Sender, more works has to be done to forward the email to the right person.

Hopefully this can be resolve soon.