Email feedback to web form submitter

sahilhq

Hi, 

I have a Smartsheet set up on a project with a smartsheet web form in it. One of the fields that is not mandatory for the form user to fill is their email address. I was wondering, is it at all possible to automate personal feedback to all those who include their email address when filling the form? The personal feedback or automated response I would like to have in place is basically an automated email from Smartsheets to the person who has filled in the form that their request has been actionned. The email trigger will be once the status of the action changes open to closed by the sheet owner in the sheet.

I hope this makes sense.

Andrée Starå

Hi Sahil,

Yes, you could set up an automation that would trigger when needed and send an alert to the submitter.

Would that work?

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

sahilhq

Hi Andree!

 

Thanks for the prompt response. Please could you show me how to do it? As you can see from the image below, there is a column for email address (which automatically gets populated once the user fills the form) and a status column. As said previously, I would like the email trigger to be once the status of the action  manually changes from open to closed. A step by step guide on how to set up the automation will be very useful! Thanks. 

Paul Newcome

You could also include placeholders to make the message even more personalized/action specific.

sahilhq

How?

Paul Newcome

Either in the subject or body field when customizing the message, if you wrap the column name in a set of double curly brackets, it will take whatever data is in that particular column for whatever row triggered the action and place it there in the message.

 

Lets just say you have a column for first name [First Name] and last name [Last Name]. When you set up the custom message in the action, you could start it off with 

 

Hello {{First Name}},

.

When the alert goes out to John Smith, the automated email he receives would start with 

 

Hello John,

.

You could use this to include specific information such as the Action Description or a ticket number (or both) to help the recipient understand exactly what it is they are receiving a message about.

sahilhq

Thanks for the detailed reply... could I also ask how to send the automated email through Smartsheets when the action is closed (this was the main issue)? As, I have said in the chain of Smartsheet discussion below - some of the users filling the form just enter their email address so what I would like to have is an automated email to them through Smartsheets when an action is closed to know how their action was dealt with. A step by step process will be really helpful. 

Paul Newcome

You would create an Alert to be triggered when the Status field changes to "Closed".

 

Below that you will see where you can send to specific people. You can change that to "Send to contacts in a cell", and select the email address column.

 

Just below that you will see a link to "Customize message". Clicking on that is where you will enter the custom message along with any placeholders that you may be using.

sahilhq

But in my case, there is no contacts in a cell. The sheet is shared with several members who don't necessarily use Smartsheets. What happens is that when someone fills in a form, the details of what they have filled in the form automatically gets populated within the sheet. Some of them also provide their email address which also gets populated within one of the columns in the sheet once the form has been submitted (see image below). What I want is an automated email from Smartsheets sent to the form submitter on how their action has been dealt when the status changes from 'open' to 'closed'. Can automated emails be sent when we just have their email address within the sheet and not have them as a 'contact'?

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

I saw that Paul answered already!

Let me know if I can help with anything else!

Best,

Andrée

Paul Newcome

Yes. As long as you have the column set as a Contact type, a manually entered email address can be used.

sahilhq

Thank you!

Paul Newcome

Happy to help!