Receiving multiple emails from single workflow

Good morning and happy Friday! I'm hoping someone might be able to help me figure out why myself and others are all receiving multiple emails when a workflow is triggered.

I did recently move this particular smartsheet from Sheets to Workspaces, so maybe that caused an issue? But what's happening is, I have an approvals workflow that will send an Approve/Deny request to whomever is listed in a specific cell. Then I have two leaders set to be alerted when the request is either approved or denied. The last few projects that went through triggered eight emails for this workflow to each of those leaders.

Any ideas how to fix this? Please and thank you!

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Accepted answers

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @LoriStrongin

Thank you for sharing the screenshots.

I was able to recreate the duplicate alert problem you reported.

As I tested, one way to prevent this is to send alerts not to "Specific People" but to "contacts in a cell".

As shown in the image below, I added CC3 Alert multiple contact columns for this purpose.

The workflow below utilizes "Send to contacts in a cell" for both approval and alerts.

And, as shown below, the contact in the CC3 Alert, or demo@cloudsmart.jp, received only one alert.

Note in Gmail, the older message has 2 after Smartsheet Automation, as "Smartsheet Automation. 2", meaning there are duplicate messages.

The same was true even if I used "Send to specific people" for the Approval request, but used "Send to contacts in a cell" for the alerts.

I do not understand why sending to specific people duplicates the alert, but using this method should stop your problem.

The following images are my test to replicate your issue.

I first suspected the possibility of being selected for all assignments, Lead, CC1, and CC2.

The setup caused the duplicate issue, but that was not the root cause, as assigning to a single role also resulted in duplicate issues, as shown later.

An interesting observation is that although Smartsheet automation sends update requests through different workflows, one for Lead and the other for CC1 or CC2, only the first one is valid, and the second acts more like an update request.

As shown below, the second request does not have an "Approve/Decline" button.

Assigning to a single role also resulted in duplicate issues.

All comments

Cayla Davis

Are the emails the same email or are they different? Can you share what emails they are getting that are duplicated?

LoriStrongin

It's the same email, over and over and over. 🤔

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @LoriStrongin

Could you share a screenshot or description of the trigger and condition section of your workflow?

I’m suspecting the trigger might be set to something like “When rows are changed”, and one of the actions in the same workflow is updating a field that causes the row to meet the trigger condition again. That would explain why you're seeing the same email multiple times, even without any manual changes.

Once we see the trigger details, it’ll be easier to confirm if that’s what’s happening.

LoriStrongin

Screenshot 2025-07-15 at 8.06.52 AM.png

Screenshot 2025-07-15 at 8.07.16 AM.png

Screenshot 2025-07-15 at 8.05.49 AM.png

On our team, a person can be assigned one of three roles on a project: Project Lead, CC1, or CC2, so I've set up an alert to let someone know when they've been added to a project in one of those roles, as well as an approve/deny workflow to confirm they received the request.

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Hi @LoriStrongin

Thank you for sharing the screenshots.

I was able to recreate the duplicate alert problem you reported.

As I tested, one way to prevent this is to send alerts not to "Specific People" but to "contacts in a cell".

As shown in the image below, I added CC3 Alert multiple contact columns for this purpose.

The workflow below utilizes "Send to contacts in a cell" for both approval and alerts.

And, as shown below, the contact in the CC3 Alert, or demo@cloudsmart.jp, received only one alert.

Note in Gmail, the older message has 2 after Smartsheet Automation, as "Smartsheet Automation. 2", meaning there are duplicate messages.

The same was true even if I used "Send to specific people" for the Approval request, but used "Send to contacts in a cell" for the alerts.

I do not understand why sending to specific people duplicates the alert, but using this method should stop your problem.

The following images are my test to replicate your issue.

I first suspected the possibility of being selected for all assignments, Lead, CC1, and CC2.

The setup caused the duplicate issue, but that was not the root cause, as assigning to a single role also resulted in duplicate issues, as shown later.

As shown below, the second request does not have an "Approve/Decline" button.

Assigning to a single role also resulted in duplicate issues.

LoriStrongin

Thank you so so so much for such a detailed response, @jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp! I re-set up my workflows like you recommended, and they're working perfectly! Thank you again!!!!

jmyzk_cloudsmart_jp

Happy😁 to help!

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