How do you create simultaneous / concurrent workflows in Smartsheet?

Susan_danner
Susan_danner ✭✭
edited 02/03/25 in Smartsheet Basics

Our Quality Department oversees the new formulas and SKUs that must undergo an approval process before they are permitted to proceed to production. This process involves task completion by various departments, followed by necessary approvals from department managers. In total, six approvals are required. However, these approvals are not interdependent, meaning one does not rely on the completion of another. Our goal was to create a Smartsheet that facilitates notifications and approvals once all departmental tasks are marked complete and the status is updated to 'Ready for Approval.' We wanted the workflow to prompt each department for approval simultaneously. Upon receiving all six approvals, the system would then alert the Quality Department. Despite numerous attempts, I've been unable to successfully establish a concurrent approval workflow. I had to create six separate workflows, each with identical initial conditions, to route them to the six distinct departments. This is more time consuming for our team to maintain, as our preference was to have one unified automation process. We have 6 different approval columns in our sheet, and I have been successful with the 6 different workflows. Just wanted to see if anyone had any advice.

Answers

  • John_Foster
    John_Foster Community Champion

    Hi @Susan_danner,

    We had a similar issue albeit with only 3 simultaneous approvals required and we had to set up 3 different automations for this.

    I am not aware of a better way of doing this, but will be following this thread to see if anyone else does.

    Thanks,
    John