Contacts Reqeusted via Form at not appearing as Contacts in Sheet

I am requesting contact information via form which are later used in approval workflows. The form works perfectly, and the contact name is supplied to the sheet, but it does not appear as contact. Our contacts are managed via administrator, so I cannot create independent lists. Because the contact information is NOT KNOWN, I cannot use the approval workflow. I can type the exact same name that is in the contact cell, and it updates to a known contact. Am I doing something wrong in the form request? All contact requests are set to Contact in the column. Please help! I don't want to have to retype several names for each request!

Answers

  • Hi @Jennifer Ives,

    I am seeing this behavior as well. I just tested on a sheet with a contact field in a form. I first manually entered a contact on the first row that had a name and email associated with it, then filled out the form a few times. I found that entering the name in the form field will only show the name and entering in an email address will only show the email in the cell. You may want to submit a Product Enhancement Request for this but I also recommend reaching out to the Support Team to see if they can determine whether this is expected or if it's a Bug in the system.

    In the meantime, you may want to consider capturing email addresses in your form instead of names to be able to get the system to recognize your contacts as useable recipients when using the "Send to contacts in a cell" option for your workflows.

    I hope that helps!

    Ben

  • I will give email a go. I am sure our teams won't appreciate that need, but we will see! Thank you for your diligence!

  • Same issue. When rows are added via a Form, and a contact is requested, we have to manually go to all the fields that are "Contact" and re-enter the contacts name. Exactly the same as originally submitted.

    There is a bug here and it should be addressed.

  • It seems this issue is still happening and is causing my workflow to break since I need to "send to all contacts in a cell" at one point in the flow. Now when we kick off the flow with a form, I have to manually go into the source sheet and change the name back to a contact. Is this on the radar for feature enhancement yet? Its been over a year now.

  • I would like to see this functionality added, as well. It seems like a no brainer and I've seen it mentioned in several threads spanning a couple of years. My need is the same as the original post...an approval workflow that needs to send an email to the individual identified in the contact list on the form.

  • 2023, and we still cannot have a form that uses a contact field. Even if we type the correct name, or initials into the form when it gets to the list, it isn't a contact person. And then the automation that sends that contact an email or other message that they have a new issue, isn't sent. Until I manually go through all the weekly submittals and hand change them to the correct contact. Seriously, this is important.

  • LSmith
    LSmith ✭✭

    I am having the same exact issue. The Requester name in a form is not showing up as a Contact in the sheet cell, even though it is configured as a Contact list cell. I understand the workaround of manually changing the plain name in the cell to a contact in order for the requester to receive emails through the automated workflow, but does anyone have another workaround that can use the email in a cell for the notification to be received? Changing Column Type to Text/Number? I hate to do it this way as it leaves it prone to error though. Hoping Smartsheet can fix this ASAP!

  • Helena P.
    Helena P. ✭✭✭✭

    HI all, having the same problem but it looks this still hasn't been solved?