Update requests to non users

Laura Bartlett

Hi All

I am very confused by a current project. One of our Admins is trying to use smartsheet to get lunch and RSVP requests from a group of about 200+ people. About half have a smartsheet account-- the other half all have emails that are approved by our account. The first round of sending requests to the entire sheet, half of them came back with an email error:

Workflow Delivery Alert

The following people included in the RSVP workflow for "2024 Attendee Sheet" are not currently being notified:

If you want them to receive notifications, share them to 2024 Attendee Sheet or change your Automation permissions to a less restrictive setting. Find out how

I double checked our permission and it was limited... wich "Users in the same account as the sheet owner" should have let all those email go through as they are an approved domain.

So then as the Admin I changed it to Unrestricted as a test to see if that worked.... i then manually typed in the emails of those who do not have an account and pushed out another automation. It appeared to go through and all was well.

However, we have not gotten any responses and a few people have confirmed they did not get the email.

My question is multi part:

1. Part of the main smartsheet product is update requests that can be send regardless if they have an account or are shared to the sheet.... so why did the approved domains not go during the first attempt?
2. After i lessened the entire account sharing (which TBH I do not like) does it appear to have sent-- but users did not get the email. (We see the update request as pending on our side-- but multiple users say they have no email)
3. We just tried manually requested it to one person--- and it worked, but we have over 100 outstanding RSVPs and doing that many manual requests is ridiculous (i included that screenshot below as it just happened.

Please tell me what I am doing wrong :) !!

thank you!

Paul Newcome

1. Approved Domains are not necessarily part of your account.
2. You should be able to adjust the automation permission settings on a sheet by sheet basis. Users not receiving the email should also check their junk and spam folders. Some companies also have automatic spam filtering on their servers. If you are sending to a work email, it may be that the server security is filtering it out before it is received.
3. With the proper sheet level automation settings, double checking junk/spam folders, and double checking whitelisting on company email servers, you should not need to send all of them manually.

Laura Bartlett

HI Paul! Thank you for responding.

We are working with a few users to check their spam-- but our org has been using Smartsheet for well over 4 years and nothing should be blocked at this point.

This still leaves the main question as to why those without accounts were not sent the first or second time? With the "limited" sharing-- those emails should qualify as approved and they did not get sent. Then I made account and sheet adjustments to "Unrestricted" and they still did not send.

I am still confused as to why I needed to type in the emails in the 'contains' field to get them to finally go out (and then to be stuck somewhere in spam...)

Paul Newcome

Just because they have an account does not necessarily mean they are part of the sheet owner's account. I am not part of your account, and as such would not be able to receive a notification from one of your sheets with the second automation permissions setting if I was not shared to the sheet even though I am on an enterprise account.

Laura Bartlett

The users we had issue with do not have an accounts. It appears all the people with accounts both received the initial push AND the email was successfully delivered.

I thought one of the core features of update requests was to not require all users to have accounts. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having unrestricted access for automations?

Paul Newcome

The core feature doesn't require users to have accounts depending on the restrictions set within each individual sheet. Unrestricted access doesn't require users to have an account.

Laura Bartlett

Both my sheet and my account have unrestricted access.

Paul Newcome

In that case, all users should be receiving the email. What level plan do you have?

Genevieve P.

Heya, just jumping in here to confirm what Paul noted:

If these users do not have a Smartsheet account and you're sending an automated Update Request to their emails (which is showing successful in the sheet), then it is very likely that these are getting caught in their Spam filter or their company's email protection system. Automated emails from unknown programs are more likely to be filtered as spam. Here's more information, and a list of domains for them to add to their allowlist: Issue: Email not received from Smartsheet

Cheers,

Genevieve

Laura Bartlett

we have an enterprise plan.

We did hear back from a couple users who said this did receive the manual push. But that still doesn't explain why I had to take the extra steps in the first place?

For a while-- it looked liked we had two issues. 1. users not getting email despite sheet showing pending and 2. SS not correctly running automation for those emails without accounts.

It appears that #1 is resolved as the users were in fact getting the emails.

But #2 still baffles me and I want to figure out a way so it won't happen again

Genevieve P.

Hi @Laura Bartlett

For #2, this is due to privacy settings.

If these users don't have a Smartsheet account, your workflow settings need to be set to Unrestricted to allow emails to come from the sheet and go to any email address. Here's an article with more information: Recipient doesn't receive workflow notifications

As Paul noted, "Users in the same account as the sheet owner" mean that they need to be Members of your Smartsheet plan (unlicensed or licensed - either or). This means they would need a Smartsheet account and to be added to your plan (see here). If they don't have an account at all, then Unrestricted is the level of permission needed. Does that make sense?

Cheers,

Genevieve