Multiple workflows for a Product Approval Process (URGENT)

Isaac Gallardo

Everyone,

I hope you are doing well, I wanted to reach out to you to try to find a solution to the current problem I have. The Smartsheet spreadsheet that I created managed the information of 4 different plants. The process is:

(1) The information is entered in the sheet by submitting the info throw a form. One of the questions of the forms is What plant are you from?

A. Victorville B. California C. Alabama D. Michigan

(1) Then, throw a workflow the quality Department of that plant received an email to submit information to this sheet it is a (Request for Update). (3) once the information is uploaded, the Quality Manager needs to approve the information entered in the system by approving the approval process (Request for Approval). (4) Then, the workflow sends another email to the customer asking for their approval (5) once the customer approved it, (6) then the workflow sends an email to a distribution group.

The first issue I encounter was that the workflow that I created has multiple conditionals with the same information in each condition. The condition is the plant.

e.g.

If the plant is Victorville, then, the workflow will trigger Victorville Plant flow. however, at the approval process is where I had a problem because all 4 plants use the same approval cell, and Smartsheet does not allow that.

I now created 4 workflows the same way I created the initial workflow but now each plant has its individual flow. However, once it goes to the approval process, I believe it triggers the other workflow because all the plants are getting 4 emails with the exact same information.

At the bottom of the email says: you are receiving this information because you are subscribed to the Victorville workflow, the other email says the same thing but California, Alabama, Michigan Workflow.

I don't want the customer to get 4 same emails. I need to find a solution on this.

Any Idea on how to do this?

pgram117

Hello,
This is probably a little too late, and not sure on how your spreadsheet is entirely set up. In a similar structure style, I had created 2 spreadsheets:
spreadsheet 1 - main sheet has all critical information,
spread sheet 2 - is a reference sheet with rows of contacts, your columns would probably look like :
[Site, Q. Approver 1, Q. Approver 2, etc…] but have the approver columns as contacts.

After your main form is submitted with a Site, you can have approver columns (contacts type columns) in spreadsheet 1 that are autofilled using a VLOOKUP that searches through your reference spreadsheet. (see example and repeat for each level of approval)

Ex. VLOOKUP("NAME_OF_SITE", reference_sheet_table_array, column_indx_of_approver1, FALSE (for exact match))
NOTE: make sure your reference sheet's first column is are the Sites with the same spelling.

Then. when row is added, your workflow can trigger and can reference send approval to cell[approver1], then cell[approval2] etc…

Hope that gives some ideas if it was still unsolved!