CopyRow Automation Not Working or Glitching

Ryan Holguin

Hello All,

We've recently had a few issues regarding the CopyRow Automation. We have our stakeholders submit project request from the source sheet to a project tracker/list sheet (destination sheet). However, there have been a few cases recently where the automation didn't run when all of the criteria were met, causing projects to be delay.

Would you be able to offer any guidance on why this would happen all of the sudden? It's been working all year without issues.

Here's how the automation is set up:

Darren Mullen

@Ryan Holguin Did you only have issues yesterday? There was the Smartsheet incident with the AWS outage... Maybe it was related to that?

Ryan Holguin

@Darren Mullen - No, we had an issues on 6/9/23 and another on 5/5/23. Two separate issues, but I've heard of other times the automation hasn't worked, but don't have the dates handy to give you!

Kleerfyre

So, with these, some of them will not trigger a workflow to stop it from looping in on itself. This article from Smartsheet will give you a bit more information on what can and cannot trigger a workflow.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2479236-trigger-blocks-define-when-your-workflow-is-executed

Darren Mullen

@Ryan Holguin Ok. Was just a thought. I remember during the last Smartsheet outage that automations came through eventually, so it may not have even affected yours.

There must be something else going on. Maybe it isn't apparent and has something to do with the order the the fields are filled and and saved?

Or.... sometimes people don't receive notifications because they get flagged as spam or go to a tab if they are using Gmail... or users sometimes unsubscribe from notifications?

Do you have multiple people on the notification that you could verify if one received it, but another one didn't?

Ryan Holguin

@Kleerfyre - Read the article and not sure it'll help my situation, but handy to keep in mind.

Do you see anything from my screenshot of the workflow that would cause in infinite loop or circular reference?

Ryan Holguin

@Darren Mullen - No worries, it's helpful to bounce ideas off one another!

Well, we are all apart for the same organization and the stakeholders are all internal stakeholders. The issues is that the row that is getting triggered by the automation is not getting copied to the destination row. Even though nobody receives a notification that something went wrong.

Kleerfyre

@Ryan Holguin yeah, I had this same issue even when my workflow wasn't going to create a loop. They have certain triggers blocked no matter what. So if this workflow is suppose to be triggered based on what is placed in a sheet from another sheet, then your issue could be with that. Do you have any screenshots of your sheets you could share so that we can see that side of it?

Ryan Holguin

@Kleerfyre

Here is a snippet of the source sheet (where the workflow is):

Here is the snippet of the destination sheet (where the row should be copied to):

Note: These are not the same project requests, but just giving you an idea of the layout.

Darren Mullen

@Kleerfyre Good thought about the looping. However, from my experience I think that Smartsheet will deactivate the workflow and notify you if there is a concern with looping.

Kleerfyre

@Darren Mullen that has not been my experience. I created a workflow that wouldn't have had any looping issues, but because it was being triggered by a cell that was linked to another sheet, it wouldn't work unless I did a timed trigger and that would create an issue of everything being late if I did that. I have had some that if they loop and trigger another workflow and that workflow triggers the first workflow, that I got an automated email the first time the loop occurred and had to fix the workflows.

Kleerfyre

Your issue is with the cell link in the row with YouTube Edit. If any of your triggers come from a cell that has any cell linking, your workflow will not work. Go back and look at others that didn't work to see if they have any cells that have any cell links either to or from them.

Ryan Holguin

@Kleerfyre - Basically, no cells on the row can have a cell link otherwise, the trigger won't work? Meaning, the solution is to make sure no cells have a cell link prior to initiating the trigger?

Kleerfyre

@Ryan Holguin if that cell is being used as one of the conditions or triggers to make the row copy, then yes, you cannot have a cell link.

Ryan Holguin

@Kleerfyre - Okay, that may be the answer. I'll look into this. Thanks!

Darren Mullen

@Kleerfyre Ok. It's coming back to me a little now. Been a while since I've dealt with that sort of issue. Thanks for clarifying :)