Automation - Workflow - Reminders when a date is reached

Rozalia PC

Hi,

I created the below workflow to alert me 1 week before my due date column for a project I am working on smartsheet.

I am not receiving any email alerts - I did check and I have all notifications allowed under my account so that is all good.

Have I not set this up correctly maybe? Does it look okay or do I need to change anything?

dereksemmler

Your workflow looks correct and matches one of the workflows that I am using other than my notification is sent to the contacts in a particular field. Is it possible that you have junk mail filtering that may be catching the automated messages from Smartsheet?

Unfortunately there is no audit trail of workflow triggers as far as I know, but as long as you have data that has met the one week trigger, I would expect you to have received the notification. Within Smartsheet, do you have a notification on your account? Typically I see both an email and a notification in Smartsheet when my workflow is triggered. If you don't see either, maybe just confirm that the workflow is active.

Also, as you test, remember that it will only trigger when the date is exactly one week before today. If your data is now 5 days, or 6 days, away from the target completion date, the workflow will not trigger.

Rozalia PC

Thanks Derek,

I'll be honest and say that I was hoping that I have set this up wrong and that's why it's not working hah. So I have checked my spam emails and there's nothing in there; I do have all kinds of notifications and alerts turned on in my account and I have run a test with multiple dates for a bout a week now so at least one alert I should have received but nothing at all. And also I have no notifications in smartsheet either..... so not sure what's going on.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Rozalia PC 

I hope you're well and safe!

Ensure you've checked the Sheet Change Notification Settings box to Include my changes in sheet notifications in your Personal Settings (circle/profile in the lower-left corner).

Did that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Rozalia PC

Thanks Andree - that was already ticked - everything is ticked under notifications preferences but still don't get any alerts / notifications.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Rozalia PC

In the Manage Workflow page, can you see when that specific workflow last ran? That will help us know if it is triggering or if it has never been triggered:

Another thing to check here is your Date column. How are the dates being entered into the cells? Is it possible that they're not being read as Dates?

To test, try adding this formula to another column:

=IF(ISDATE([Target Completion Date]@row), "Yes", "No")

Then if you drag-fill that down multiple rows, it should show "Yes" for all rows (indicating the value is seen as a date). It would be helpful if we could see a screen capture of your underlying sheet, but please block out sensitive data.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Rozalia PC

Hi Genevieve,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I manually runned the workflow yesterday myself just to see if it works so that's why it's showing a date stamp for yesterday. And it didn;t even run properly as the email included the entire project plan rather that just the overdue tasks.

Also, yes, they are dates indeed. I also added the formula you sent and I do get an yes when I press enter. Please see below:

And yet, I receive no alerts. Here is a snapshot of my notifications as well:

Genevieve P.

Hey @Rozalia PC

Manually running a workflow skips the Trigger block, which is why you're not seeing any of the rows filtered out.

Thanks for confirming that the dates are showing up as dates! The next step is to add a Filter to your sheet so we can check out what rows should have been sending an email.

Can you apply a filter for everything that is less than 7 days from now? In your screen capture above, the dates are still too far in the future to have sent an alert. Can you show us the rows that should have triggered your workflow?

Thanks!

Genevieve

Rozalia PC

Hello again - by some miracle I received an alert for a test row I've set up yesterday and that worked as expected (also received the notification in smartsheet). I haven;t changed anything so I am not sure why this worked now but I am happy it did :)

Many thanks for reaching out and input - I will get back if there's any issues going forward.

Andrée Starå

@Rozalia PC

Excellent! Glad to hear it's working!

You're more than welcome!

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