Row Specific Notifications

Tim Williamson

I was wondering whether the capability exists to create notifications specifically sent to a person listed in a "Contact List" field of a particular row, a la Reminders?  One of our departments has a tracking sheet set up for queries, and I would like for my team memebers to automatically recieve notification when their issue is resolved, but not receive it when others' issues are resolved.  The only notifications that I am able to set up right now are sheet wide.

 

Am I missing something?  Is there a capabilituy within Smartsheet to handle this?  Is there a work around?

 

Thanks!

Christopher Yellen

I would love this exact same thing.  We are using a web form to populate a sheet, but then the sheet does some calculations. I need to send a report or notification to the submitter that includes the information they entered AND the final calculations. So far, I haven't found a way to automate this.

Travis

Tim, there are a couple of workarounds you can use depending how many users are in the sheet and how it’s set up.

 

The first workaround is to create a separate notification for each user that will trigger when an issue is marked as resolved. To mark an issue as resolved in these examples, we will use a Dropdown List (called “Dropdown”) with an option for “Resolved”. 

 

-Insert a checkbox column named *employee name* (“Tim”)

-Add a formula to the entire checkbox column that will ‘check’ if the corresponding Dropdown cell contains the word “Resolved” and the Assigned To cell contain “Tim”

 

=IF(AND(Dropdown1 = "Resolved", [Assigned To]1 = “Tim”), 1)

 

-Set notification to email Tim if “Tim” changes

-Hide the “Tim” column

-Repeat for each employee

 

The second workaround is to use reminders. There are two versions of this workaround, depending on how you want change your processes and if you use an End Date column. 

 

Version 1:

-Insert a Date column in your sheet (“ReminderDate”)

-Add a formula to ReminderDate that will show tomorrows date (*today* + 1) if the Dropdown List contains the word “Resolved”

 

=IF(Dropdown1 = “Resolved", TODAY(1))

 

-Set a sheet level reminder that looks to the Contact List column containing the user assigned to the issue and to the ReminderDate column

-The reminder will be sent the morning after the issue is marked as Resolved 

-Once the user receives the reminder email - they will need to delete the date from ReminderDate (if they don’t, they will continue to get an email every day, because the formula will always show tomorrows date [*today* + 1] and trigger a reminder)

 

Version 2 (if you have an End Date column):

-Insert a Date column in your sheet (“ReminderDate”)

-Add a formula to ReminderDate that will show the corresponding End Date value if the Dropdown List contains the word “Resolved”

 

=IF(Dropdown1 = “Resolved”, [End Date]1)

 

-Set a sheet level reminder that looks to the Contact List column containing the user assigned to the issue and to the ReminderDate column and set the reminder to send “1 day after” the date in the ReminderDate column

-Whenever a task is marked as complete, the user will need to set the End Date to *today* (which would send a reminder *tomorrow*)

 

André Gratton

Travis, I have the same issue.  I tried your first workaround, but everyone now gets notified regardless whose box is checked. I've triple-checked the formulas and everything seems to be in order.  What am I missing?

Travis

Andre - it sounds like you have your notifications set to send to everyone, rather than just the user who needs to get it. When setting up your notifications make sure you only select the specific user, rather than “Shared Users”.

 

Christopher Yellen

Travis: Andre and I are on the same team, but we both have the same need/problem in two different sheets. The notification is set to just one user (there's a checkmark by just one person's name) but everyone is getting the notification. I am stumped.

Travis

 

Do you have multiple notifications set up? Maybe you have one that says "if anything changes, email all shared users?"

 

 

Could you post a screenshot of your notifications (hiding any sensitive information)? 

André Gratton

Travis, in the web form, I have created the hidden checkbox columns for each user.  The formulas are in place and work perfectly.  I have set individual notifications for each user that should go to them only if a cell in their named column is changed.  I wonder if this is the issue.  While the checkbox may not be checked, the formula is still added to the cell when a new row is created, thus "changing" the cell.  This is the only reason I can think of that might be triggering the notifications to go to every user.  Thoughts? Solutions?  A little magic?

André Gratton

Travis

Andre - I think you are spot on! Adding a formula to a cell ‘changes’ the cell and will trigger a notification. I didn’t realize you were using web forms to add new data.  The auto fill function will auto fill the formula when you add a new form entry and is triggering your notifications. How often do you add new web forms? If its once a week, maybe people can live with that extra email. If its daily, that might not be practical. You might consider the two versions I suggested using reminders rather than notifications. 

 

Kierra K

I'm having the same issue. I can't do a reminder because the notifications are not based on dates, but rather on variables. I'm using the webform to add new data. The formulas are there as a trigger for the notification so that the process can be automated. Is there a way to get around this? I tried using a default value, but that didn't work either. Maybe in the next version, you can add the ability to set a value for the cell the way you do in the conditional formatting, instead of just "changes". So that we can tailor the notification emails. 

Travis

Sierra - we are looking into improving the reminder and notification systems but I do not have an estimated timeframe or additional details on this. My previous posts in this thread offer some workarounds but you also might consider using reports which can automatically pull in all the rows assigned to a specified user across multiple sheets. They can track their work in this report and it can be set to email them a PDF of the report on a recurring basis. Here is information on creating reports: http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/522214-creating-reports

Kierra K

Travis - I have created reports. The set up right now has 1 Smartsheet and 8 Reports in a single Workspace. Each report is intended for a different person who has a step in the process. However, when they need to access the sheet is not on a regular interval, and sometimes on rather short notice, so a recurring basis will not work for my purposes. We are using this particular sheet as a workflow for a process. The webform initiates the workflow, and we are trying to use the notifications as alerts for when people need to complete their parts. Some parts are contingent on other parts being done. It could be that I'm going about this the wrong way. Can you suggest an alternative method? 

Patrick Lawler

Tim and group,

This exact problem can be solved using Azuqua, an integration partner of Smartsheet. I work for Azuqua and the conditional notification scenario you referred to is one of the many scenarios we enable inside of Smartsheet.

Using Azuqua you can set up a monitor for a change either to a row, column, discussion or new row added to a sheet and then send a notification to a person assigned to that row. The notification can also be based on matching a specific condition of a cell inside that row as well.

If you want to learn more please visit our app listing at Smartsheet here:

https://www.smartsheet.com/apps/azuqua

Please feel free to follow up with any questions.

-Patrick

Crystal Ford

My problem is a little different, I set up a vacation request sheet with a Webform. Is it possible to set up a notification when a webform user submits an entry to their specific supervisor? I have the supervisor's names listed in a drop down-selected by the web form. Therefore-I can't assign a row until after it's already filled out. Is there a way for it to notify the selected supervisor automatically or is it only available by assigning rows?

Crystal Ford

Yes, if you could help, that would be great, thank you!