Automating weekly notification

stuartr

I need some advice on creating a workflow that will meet the following requirement.

We created a calendar and online booking form in smartsheets to allow people to submit requests via the form to attend an event. These requests are triaged each week, and a decision is then made to either Approve, Decline or alternatively wait (do nothing) with each request.

People submit several requests including time, date, event, guests names. What we would like to do is send them a consilidated reminder each week, notifying them of any requests that they have submitted within the last 7 days and all the associated details relevant to each request as listed above.

We send a one off noticiation on 21st Jan to all requests where status was submitted, so now all requestors have a detailed and consolidated record of what they asked for. My question is how do I set up a workflow to send an ongoing weekly notifcation to anyone requesting to attend any event in the last 7 days after 21st Jan? ( created a system field created date which I use for this purpose).

I am usnure if I set the trigger to new row added only? Also if I set the workflow today for reoccurance weekly, will the first notification only be sent on 5th Feb (ie in 7 days) to bookings requested in the last 7 days, hence I will still have a gap for requests created between 21st Jan and today (29th Jan). Do I need to run another one off where creation date is greater than 21st Jan, then set up a weekly so theres no gaps? Can someone advise?

Genevieve P.

Hi Stuart,

You could set up a workflow with the trigger being When Rows are Added, like you said, but have it run Weekly.

Weekly alerts are sent out in the middle of the night, between the Thursday and Friday of the following week. (You can read more about the different timings in our Help Center, here.)

Then you can set up a Condition in that workflow to look at the "Date Created" column and only send the rows that were entered in the last 7 days.

Finally, have the alert go Contacts in a Cell, from the Guest Name column (as long as this is a Contact column with email addresses to send to).

Here's an example of how I set mine up:

You will likely want to customize the message that goes along with the alert, along with adjusting which columns are actually sent to the requestor. I would recommend testing it a few times with the Alert going directly to yourself and the timing being "when triggered" so you can see how it will look.

For your last question, yes, if you set up the workflow today it will run tonight for the past week, but you will miss anything from before 7 days ago. You can either send these rows individually if there are a small number of them, or you can create a separate, one-off workflow with the conditions you specified.

Here are some Help Center articles I used to help with this: Alerts & Reminders / Alerts in Batches / Customize Content of your Alerts

Hope this helps!

Genevieve

Giovanni Arlotti

Hi Genevieve,

I have created a weekly workflow for an update request however I am not sure when the weekly update request would be triggered.

If I created the update request at row level I can change the time and day the weekly notification is triggered. However I was not able to find this option if I do the same from the workflow option.

Is it possible to chose when the weekly update request from the workflow is sent out?

Andrée Starå

Hi @Giovanni Arlotti

Yes, it is.

You can change the trigger to When a date is reached and set it on a recurrence schedule.

Would that work?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please help the Community by marking it as the accepted answer/helpful. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!