Alert someone not sending notifications

I have a very standard approval workflow set up, that is not issuing alerts as expected:

The initial Approval request is sent through (the emails and Smartsheet alerts for that are correctly received) and the approval or rejection action is done, but the alert to be sent for "If Approved" or "If Declined", just never ever arrive - on email or in my Smartsheet alerts. To try to eliminate the problem, I am set up as both parties (originator and approver), I am the sheet owner and a system admin, I have set the alerts and notifications in the Automation Settings as unrestricted... but I get nothing. Zip. Nada.

The workflow is triggered like this:

That status comes from a form that sets the Status column to "Pending" by default - it is a hidden field.

After the accepted/declined alert, the next step in both cases, is to lock the row, and that action is performed, so the automation is clearly working its way through the steps.

Any suggestions, please!? I'm going nuts!

Karla

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David Tutwiler

I'm curious if you have the automation changing the status when the Approval/Declined happens. I'm wondering if there might be a timing issue from something coming in as Accepted/Declined and the trigger being the status of Pending.

To test, could you change the trigger to something else to see if the alerts come through as intended?

Tsogo Sun Hotels

Hi David

Thanks for the thought! Always great to try something else.

I gave it a shot and still the alert didn't come through, so I changed who the confirmation message went to (ie so that I wasn't the approver and originator), and lo and behold: the alert came through. Seems smartsheet doesn't notify you of the approval (or rejection) if you were the one who actually clicked on the approve or decline button!

You learn something new every day!

Thanks!

Karla

Jason Wickland

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/261904#Comment_261904

Super helpful explanation Karla! I've been troubleshooting this same issue and your comments were spot on. Once I changed the email that the notifications are sent to, the workflow works just like it is supposed to. Thank you!

Andrea Plastas

Thanks for figuring that out. Seems to me that's a bug tho as if I am testing a workflow using only my email I need to see that approve/decline message. Is that something that can be fixed?

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