Can you change "who" automatic alerts come from?

Toni Vohnoutka · 05/27/20

Is there a setting to change the from field of an automatic alert email. Workflows/automations that I have set up myself always come from "my name via Smartsheet". It has caused some confusion to people receiving these automated emails.

Is there a way to update this on my end so it comes from a generic smartsheet inbox and does not show my name.

Thanks!

Susan Peck · 05/28/20

@mschwahn, @Toni Vohnoutka

There is a longer thread (actually several threads compiled together) on this topic here:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/67525/upcoming-changes-to-our-automated-notifications-live-today-17th-april-2020

You may want to add your comments to that thread. Despite Support saying people "love this feature" not all Smartsheet people do. The workaround is clunky and for those of us who have used all our licenses, it won't work. The simple solution is for Smartsheet to make this "great new feature" an option that can be customized so it works for everyone.

We've been Smartsheet customers since 2011. They used to listen to us, but it doesn't seem to be the case any more as they've gotten bigger.

Also, you may want to request an enhancement and Vote Up the other thread.

Thanks,

susan

mschwahn · 05/28/20

We recently asked the same question for the same reasons you have. We noticed the change when the update they implemented changed the "from" email address from the generic Smartsheet email to the "Joe Smith via Smartsheet". This was their response:

Thank you for contacting Smartsheet Support. Our recent personalization of the From and Reply-To names in automated notification emails was deployed system-wide. There isn’t currently an option to customize the From or Reply-To names or revert back to the previous behavior, but we’ve let our Product team know about your request and they’ll consider it for a future update.

We implemented this change because of a large volume of customer feedback about low read and response rates to automated notifications, reminders, and requests. We dug into the problem and found that the impersonal sender name ‘Smartsheet Automation’ was commonly not trusted by email recipients. Early feedback has demonstrated that personalizing the From and Reply-To names has helped, and that seeing a person's name tied to an alert or request is resulting in more action being taken by recipients.

If you’d prefer not to have your name tied to automated alerts and requests, you might consider changing the sheet owner, or changing your name in your Smartsheet Personal Settings to make it more impersonal. Bear in mind that our research indicated that impersonal senders led to lower read and response rates to automated alerts and requests.

See this Help Center article for additional information:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2481841-overview-of-automated-notifications-sent-via-smartsheet

So it sounds like the best way is to have a generic email (maybe a shared inbox or distribution list) as the "owner" of all of the sheets, so it would come from "yourbusiness@domain.com via Smartsheet". They suggest this option at the very bottom of the help article link above:

If it doesn’t make sense to have a single person as the owner of a sheet or if a degree of anonymity is important, consider using a service account for the sheet owner. (A service account is something you’d need to set up with your IT department. That account would need to have a Smartsheet license so that it can own sheets.)

We didn't want to allocate a license to this so we ended up just dealing with it and haven't created the generic mailbox.

TL;DR: no, there's no way to change it currently, but we really wish there was.

Susan Peck · 05/28/20