Hyperlinks in Alerts/Update Requests and Shortened URLs

Question

I've seen other posts on this and articles online, but I am wondering if anyone has a workaround to make URLs in Alerts/Update Requests hyperlinks. It doesn't make sense requiring someone to copy/paste a URL into a web  browser.

I tried to include it as a field, rather than as text within the message, and even though it is a hyperlink in the sheet, it still is plaint text, not a clickable link.

First, anyone have a workaround that enables hyperlinks either in the message or as a field included with an alert/update request?

Second, anyone know a way to create shortened URLs within Smartsheet? The link in the screenshot above is long. It's a link to pre-populate the origin and destination in Google Maps. When the URL is so long, there is always a risk it will be copied/pasted incorrectly. Plus, when you Open Request, the URL doesn't appear completely in the box, making it look unprofessional.

In the sheet, the URL is generated via a formula, based on addresses included in other columns, if that is important to know.

TVang · Answer

Unfortunately, Smartsheet's alert/notification does not support rich text nor HTML formatting. Some email clients/apps will convert text into hyperlinks if your message includes something that looks like a URL. Outlook desktop and Gmail, as examples, will do this. Outlook online will not. Smartsheet itself will generate a hyperlink if text that you enter into a cell looks like a URL. However, as you've experienced, this is not a reliable approach because some characters (like the comma in your example) is not recognized as part of the URL. To account for special characters in the URL, you will need to replace them with "percent-encoding values". For example, the comma (a.k.a., CHAR(44) ) also has a hexadecimal value of "2C". It's percent-value is %2C, HEXTODEC("2C") = 44 . In order for your URLs to work, you'll need to replace "," with "%2C". SUBSTITUTE( <>, ",", "%2C") Once you have a working URL, you can include that column as part of the alert. Here's documentation on including special characters, Include special characters in...