Automations Tracker

I have a workflow with nearly 40 automations, half of which are email-based requests for updates with various sets of triggers.

While I know the automations work, due to months of testing, when our system went live to the institution, I became very worried that the automations wouldn't run and I'd have no idea whether or not the automations triggered or that the appropriate messages were sent/received.

As manager of this complex process, having an admin system that tracked this information on a special level would grant me a lot of peace of mind. I have status trackers, but they function when I know the system is working, and when parties are making relevant updates, rather than confirming that automations ran appropriately and messages were sent as required.

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Comments

John Mealey

I have not found a clean solution to the desire to know who was sent an Alert nor, usually, when it is triggered. As an Admin, you cannot BCC yourself on an Alert nor see to whom it went (one or more people). Yes, I can interrogate each Alert to view who is listed to get the Alert. I now include myself when I set up Alerts and as a result get an almost unmanageable volume of them. Also, if an e-mail address is incorrectly defined, I have no visibility into those e-mail alerts falling.

I do not have a approach in mind .. simply seeking an improvement

virgh

For what it is worth, the automation will let you know the last time that it was run with a line below the automation that tells you "Last ran on Oct 21, 2025, 4:31 PM" followed by "Last modified" information.

Also, when my automations fail they notify me (the creator) that they have failed.

Hope that helps.

facServ

oh goodness, that is helpful to know, I completely missed over that.

I'm still a bit worried, because it appears as if the automations didn't trigger like they were supposed to during my testing phase. And people beyond myself utilized the form and it worked for them as well.

I contacted the individual who recently submitted directly, and they said they received the messages, but that means the automation log you mentioned isn't accounting for that recent delivery….

All in all I'm a bit confused and am nervous that my system isn't functioning as intended, and I'm expected to provide demos to institutional stakeholders this week starting tomorrow.

I just desperately wish I could have some kind of master admin oversight of the automations running, no matter how they were triggered.

How do you receive a notice that they failed, via email? I don't think I've ever seen such a notification.

virgh

I receive a notification in two ways… 1) by email and 2) within my Smartsheet user interface.

You can get to your notifications in the left column icon set, and then click the three dots at the top right of the pop-out menu for Notifications to select your preferred methods to be notified of activity.

In the image below, I am viewing "All" notifications but there is a tab for only "Requests" if you wish to view those.

You can see that I have selected "Email" and also "Mobile Push" for all of my items. I had the option to also get the information via "Messaging Apps" but did not do that.

Hope this is helpful!

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