Automated Workflow - Assigning Multiple Contacts to a Cell

I have create a project intake form for my program. In my form, I ask the user to select the departments that a project will involve (e.g., Communications, Product Development, Field Team, etc.). I then created an automation where, depending upon the department selected, a person was assigned in a contact column to the project. The departments involved is a muti-select option in the form, and the assignment column is multi-select as well. So that, if someone selects multiple departments, multiple contacts would be assigned to the same cell. However, when the automation is triggered, it only assigns the contact of the first department selected, not all of them. Why?

Find more posts tagged with

Forms

Sheets

functionality

Automations

Project Management

Accepted answers

Paul Newcome

The way branched conditions work is similar to nested IFs. If the first argument evaluates as true, it will not even consider the other arguments. Try separate automations for each department so that way all departments trigger and evaluate for their conditions.

All comments

Erik Camacho

Hello @Erin Rhodes,

I would suggest that you check your sheet in the column where contacts are being collected and ensure that you are allowing multiple values.

Paul Newcome

Are you able to provide screenshots of the automation?

Erin Rhodes

Here are screenshots of the automation and one of the contact list properties. I've already enabled it for allowing multiple contacts per cell, but it still only assigns one contact, the one associated with the first listed department.

Erin Rhodes

04-Screenshot 2026-03-06 085610.png

Here's a screenshot of the properties for the "Departments Involved" also,

Paul Newcome

Erin Rhodes

That helped! Thank you so much.

Paul Newcome

Happy to help. 👍️

SNH

Another approach, if you want to avoid creating many separate automations, is to use a helper structure instead of branching.

Create a small reference sheet that maps each department to a contact. Then use a formula to return the appropriate contacts when the departments multi-select column contains those values. Automations can then be simplified to only trigger notifications or updates rather than assigning contacts.

This approach reduces the number of workflows to maintain and makes updates easier if department contacts change.

Paul Newcome

@SNH Base formula outputs can't be used as multiple valid contacts in a single cell. There are a number of options to make them that way, but generally speaking, just using a formula doesn't work.

If you have been able to get just a formula to output multiple usable contacts, I'd be super excited to see it in action.

jjg279

Hey Paul, we have been using this formula that seems to be working for us, though maybe it doesn't fit what you are actually asking about. The contacts field is a "contact" column but is filled from a cell based on a PI:

This links to a contact sheet that we maintain:

So the "Lab Contacts" on the main sheet is filled automatically based on a form submission with the PI name as a dropdown.

Paul Newcome

@jjg279 Thank you, and yes. Populating a single contact is very possible. Multiple contacts can also be populated this way if they all live in the same cell being brought over.

What I am referring to is a dynamic list brought in by something like a JOIN/COLLECT to compile a variable list of contacts based on something like a multi-select dropdown for departments.

Sign in to join the conversation!

Quick Links

Component react.discussion.discussions had an error.

ref must be one of: categoryID, siteSectionID, category, category/categoryID, category/name, category/description, category/url, category/allowedDiscussionTypes, locale, siteSection, siteSection/basePath, siteSection/contentLocale, siteSection/sectionGroup, siteSection/sectionID, siteSection/name, siteSection/description, siteSection/apps, siteSection/attributes, layoutViewType, discussionID, commentID, page, latest, sort, sortType, lookupSort, discussion, discussion/name, tags, breadcrumbs, discussionApiParams, serverDraftID, serverDraft.