Automations from a Template are now Broken in existing sheets

Aja

Hi Community!

I'm having a problem with automations. I added new automations to my template that was originally used to create some existing projects.

Once I added the automations to the template, existing projects immediately inherited the new automations and now they're ALL broken. See screenshots. When I tried to start over and delete all the workflows in the old project, Smartsheet started to delete working automations in the template. How are they linked and is it possible to unlink them? The existing projects are already populated with data that will be very labor intensive to replace.

Thanks for the help!

Aja

Darren Mullen

@Aja

When you have automations that are send to a specific person, you have to redo them in the new sheets.

Solution?

Create contact columns in your template with the names, and then use the contact column in your automation. Then they'll stay intact.

As an even better solution, create a contact lookup sheet, link it to the contact columns in your template. Then when you need to add, remove, or change a contact you do it in one place and it propagates to ALL your linked sheets!

Darren Mullen

@Aja

When you have automations that are send to a specific person, you have to redo them in the new sheets.

Solution?

Create contact columns in your template with the names, and then use the contact column in your automation. Then they'll stay intact.

As an even better solution, create a contact lookup sheet, link it to the contact columns in your template. Then when you need to add, remove, or change a contact you do it in one place and it propagates to ALL your linked sheets!

Aja

@Darren Mullen Great suggestion, thank you! It will be helpful when we have multiple projects.

Darren Mullen

@Aja You're welcome! There's always more than one way to do things, so that's just a suggestion :)