No Consolidation w/Double Bracket Placeholders?

There is a little disclaimer on Smartsheet's article about automated alerts under using double bracket placeholders. Has anyone experienced this happening to them?

NOTE: Adding placeholders to your messages may possibly result in you receiving multiple alerts or actions where you may have previously received a single, consolidated one. If you find yourself receiving multiple alerts or actions with similar subject and message content, and you want to change this behavior, edit the delivery settings to remove the placeholders.

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Isaac Jose

Hello,

Thanks for your post! I can confirm that this may occur if placeholders are used in the alert and multiple rows meet the alert criteria when the alert is triggered. For example, if you have a rule that sends you an alert when rows are added, and five rows are added in a single save, you may receive five separate alerts rather than one consolidated alert with information from all five rows.

When placeholders are not used, all five rows can be sent in a single notification because the subject and message body are identical. However, since the subject and message body may differ for each of these rows when using placeholders in the alert, a separate notification must be generated for each row.

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,

Isaac J

Smartsheet Support

SYSPK

Thanks Isaac.

In my case, I'd only like the bodies of the messages themselves to use placeholders. I'd want the subjects to stay the same so they'll be nested in the recipient's inbox.

I'd like to know with certainty if this means those emails will be consolidated, before I send them out to a few hundred people.

In this case, where only the message bodies contain placeholders and subjects remain the same, would the automated emails be consolidated every time?

Thank you

Isaac Jose

Hello,

I know that you've most likely moved far beyond this yourself, but I was going through my old threads and wanted to follow up in case anybody else find this thread and needs assistance.

I can confirm that any Alert or Workflow with placeholders will generate separate emails for each row that results in a unique message body or subject. The easiest way to ensure that emails are consolidated is to remove placeholders from the subject and message body, and instead make reference to the associated field which will be displayed in the general alert details.

I hope this helps!

Isaac J

Dillon Smith

Isaac,

Thank you for your diligence. I'm hoping you can expand my understanding on this a bit. I have a sheet with unexpected behavior - when the notification automation is triggered, both consolidated and unique alerts are firing - All of my recipients receive unique xor consolidated. My desired behavior is everyone receive only unique alerts. Is there a threshold on the backend that when crossed triggers consolidation (e.g. greater than 10 uniques requires consolidation)?

Andrée Starå

Hi @Dillon Smith,

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Dillon Smith

Andrée,

Thanks for your response! I have a sheet containing a list of Calibration & PM tasks. There are Task Owner, Manager, and Directer contact columns.

Screen Shot 2020-01-22 at 8.45.11 AM.png

There will be an arbitrary number of tasks assigned to a given contact each period. I would like only individual emails to fire so that my contacts can track them in their email inbox effectively.

Screen Shot 2020-01-22 at 8.53.40 AM.png

Yesterday's inaugural email batch went out to 7 contacts (22, 3, 2, 12, 2, 1, and 6 tasks respectively). Two contacts (those who got 22 and 12 tasks) got a single consolidated email, the other 5 contacts received multiple individual emails.

At first I thought the behavior was "first row with a new contact that meets top-left-most logic branch" gets a consolidated email, but that isn't the case as no contacts in my Director column received a consolidated email. Now I think it is a numerical threshold which toggles the single/consolidated switch.

I wish I could share the sheet, but I'm not at liberty. Thanks for any advice/clarification you can offer.

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

You'll have to have the Run workflow part of the Trigger to When triggered to have them separated.

Did that fix it?

Dillon Smith

That's how it was and is.

Andrée Starå

Ok.

Strange!

If you haven’t already, I would recommend that you reach out to the Smartsheet Support Team. Smartsheet Support Team

Andrée Starå

@Dillon Smith

In another post, we concluded that if the user receives more than six update requests from a trigger using Placeholders, it will be batched in one email instead.

I hope that helps!

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