Automation Email Alert Issue - Grouping Notifications with Unique Subjects

Jeremy W.

Hi everyone,

I've been experiencing an issue with an automation setup and was hoping to get some insights or solutions from the community.

Problem

When I configure automation to send an email alert to a contact after a trigger change, the system groups email notifications together even though each has a unique value in the subject line. This grouping starts occurring with as few as two-row changes.

Specifics - This only happens when I select the "Message only" option when configuring the automation, omitting the link to the sheet. I want to simply notify specific contacts but do not wish to provide them access to, or a link to, the sheet.

Has anyone else encountered this? Any ideas on how to prevent the emails from grouping? I need each alert to be sent as a separate email to avoid any confusion. Appreciate any help you can provide!

CBlass

Hi Jeremy,

I have not encountered this exact issue, but my guess is this different behavior is not occurring because it is message only and instead because the other workflows where the notifications are not combining otherwise don't qualify. Below is a short excerpt from a help article located here: Trigger frequent, change-based automations in batches | Smartsheet Learning Center. Maybe your message only notifications meet these requirements, but the others don't? If that's the case maybe you can update the message only automations not to qualify as well.

Batch workflows for Notifications and Update and approval requests

You can only batch workflows to run Hourly, Daily, or Weekly for Notifications and Update and approval requests action types without If approved or If declined actions.

Jeremy W.

Thanks @CBlass for your response. I think in my case what I am trying to do is much simpler.

I have a form in which anyone can submit a request. Once I review and mark the request status as approved, I want to generate a 1x email notification regarding this specific request to inform the submitter that this topic was approved.

However, the unwanted experience the end user is having is when they have more than 1 approval at the same time.

The user will receive just 1 email grouping the predefined message together. This only occurs when I select the option to send a message only and not the other option to include rows or links to smartsheet.

Since the end user does not have access to my sheet I do not wish to send them a link implying that they should visit it.

CBlass

Could you post the details on the automation that is triggering these notifications? Assuming no confidential details, a screenshot would be best.

Jeremy W.

Sure thing, I attached two images below. When I select the other options under, "Message includes:" I will get individual emails for each approved row. However, I do not want to send a link to the sheet.

It is only when I select 'Message only' and have 2 or more approvals at once that I will receive a modified email changing my {{Intake ID}} in the subject to simply read something like this, Test (2 entries)

Jeremy W.

Sure thing, here are two images attached below.

For testing, I have the email sent to my email directly. I will mark rows as Approved then click save and wait for the email to arrive.

If I choose the option to send a Message only, the email will group my notifications into a single email changing my unique ids to simply read the number of total entries in the email.

The email will just have the intended message listed multiple times. However, once I select the option to include links, I start to receive individual alerts.

admin_smartsheet_lpc

I just had this same issue yesterday and I need to get it fixed ASAP. I had an email go to a client with this subject line: "Subject: (2 entries) - (2 entries) - (2 entries) - (2 entries)"  This is completely unacceptable. At least all the data was in the body of the email, but the emails must be separate.

I heard from tech support yesterday that "There currently isn't a way to turn the bundled feature off in Smartsheet." And the Smartsheet documentation backs it up with this: "With the “Message Only” alert type, any simultaneously triggered rows are combined into a single notification."

I'm going to work on a work-around today. I'm thinking about a helper column that could split the alerts into different condition paths. I'll let you know what I come up with.  

admin_smartsheet_lpc

Ok @Jeremy W., here's what I did:

I had an "auto number" column in my sheet already, and it counts by one and assigns a new number to each row. What I added for my solution was an Alert ID column that, with a formula, just pulls the right final digit from the auto-number column, so I've ended up with a column that has the single digits 0 thru 9.

Then, in my automations, I simply duplicated my alert 10 times and added a conditional filter to each one to send if the Alert ID is equal to 1, using a different number for each of my duplicated alerts.

I believe this will result in Alerts only being combined if two rows are updated at the same time AND there are 9 rows between the two rows that are being updated. This should greatly reduce the risk of combined alert emails for my specific situation, since I have very few updates happening as the entries age.

If you have a lot of rows being updated daily, you may be able to break them up in a similar way, but using a different identifier that would give you a span 20 or 30.

One drawback is if I need to update the custom message, now I have to do it 10 times. 😕

Jeremy W.

Thank you @admin_smartsheet_lpc for this idea. I will definitely have to see if this would be something we can use as a workaround... this sounds like a solution that could work😁, thank you. I doubt I will have more than 10 notifications at once to the same person. Update** Since I am already using a unique Id I believe creating a helper column like you mentioned should do the job with a formula using =RIGHT to get the last digit.

A.Curtin

Hey @admin_smartsheet_lpc, regarding your drawback...

"One drawback is if I need to update the custom message, now I have to do it 10 times. 😕"

...I typically create a calculated column for my custom message (which can be different per row) and just put a reference to that column in the workflow message field. Then, if you need to update your message, you can just change the column formula and leave the workflow alone. I usually create separate columns for Subject, Body, and sometimes Recipient. 😉

gregthomas

@A.Curtin - wow, that's so simple yet a genius level idea. Thank you!!!!

jlooslopez

@admin_smartsheet_lpc - how do you get around the infinite loop? Do you have yours set up as hourly batches?