How can automation change a cell value without the appropriate approval workflow trigger being met?

Sara Henderson

This one is a doozy and I feel like I must be missing something obvious, so bear with me:

According to the activity log on my sheet, the status of three rows was updated to "04 Shareholder Review" by Smartsheet Automation this morning (6/8/23):

The problem is that all three rows had already been fully approved and sitting at later statuses already (status are sequential by number). In other words, the automation moved them backward in the process and triggered new approval requests that confused the shareholders who had already approved the rows earlier this week.

The only automations I have that change the status to "04 Shareholder Review", are tied to an approval request completed by the managers. In other words it should only move to shareholder review status when either Reviewer 1 or Reviewer 2 (if applicable) approves.

However, I checked the cell activity for the Reviewer approvals and they were all approved two days ago and triggered the initial move to shareholder review/approval at that time:

Since the reviewers did not complete new approval requests this morning, how did the row status change?

Eric Law

@Sara Henderson Can you snapshot the "Trigger" of the workflow? It may have to do with that.

Sara Henderson

@Eric Law - Here are the triggers for the Reviewer 1 and Reviewer 2 workflows from my original post:

I also have two "reminder" approval workflows that are triggered after 3 days of reviewers not approving:

The original approval workflows should not have been triggered because the status had not changed to "03 - Manager Review" or "03 - Secondary Manager Review".

The reminder workflows should not have been triggered because the conditions were not met at the time:

1. Reviewer approvals were not "Submitted"
2. Status wasn't "03 - Manager Review" or "03 - Secondary Manager Review"

My brain hurts thinking about this 😭

Eric Law

@Sara Henderson Maybe someone did the run now option on the workflow? I have no clue how that could have happened based off of what you have showing. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

Sara Henderson

@Eric Law - Thanks for taking a look anyway! It makes me feel a little better that I'm not alone in my confusion.

WinaHath

I have the same thing happen. Did not start a workflow by checking the trigger but the column for approval status automatically changed to Revise and Resubmit. I only have a few workflows since I am just beginning to create the workspace so I am so confused.