Google Mail Distribution Groups in Contact-list Column types?

David SCOTT Johnson

I was hoping sheet automation would translate the "Distro" as easily as it did any other (non-shared) individuals I have sent alerts to.

The Distribution List is not being executed/recognized by the automation.

What are the steps I need to take (probably take) to configure the translation?

Thank you in advance, great smartsheet Community.

David SCOTT Johnson

Hi ToriLynn,

Thank you for responding. However, contrary to your answer, just now I was able to get the Distribution list to work! I needed to open the Distribution List so that it could receive e-mails from the Internet. Once that change propagated to our company's e-mail servers, a test automation from Smartsheets was successfully received by members of the Distribution list.

Perhaps we are talking about different functionality. I am happy to discuss further.

Regards,

Dave

Genevieve P.

Hi Dave,

I'm glad you were able to get it to work! I'll mark your response as the "Best Answer" so if anyone else is looking for this solution it will be easy to find.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Community Moderator

Tori Lynn Mayfield

Hi @David SCOTT Johnson

Great Question! As you've found, Smartsheet doesn't currently recognize distribution lists as valid emails to send Automated Emails.

I've let our Product team know about your request for this feature for possible future production. We appreciate your input!

• For more information on our Feature Request process, and to submit requests directly to our Product team for review, check out this article from our Learning Center: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2476161-understanding-product-updates-making-enhancement-requests
• To keep up to date with our Updates and New Releases, check out our Release Notes here: https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/product-news/release-notes

 In the meantime, you'll want to be sure to add specific email addresses directly to the Contact List column you've setup your automation workflow to send to in order for these emails to be sent.

 If this distribution list would be helpful for anyone else on your account, you might consider using a Contact List Group. Note that you will need to be on a multi-user account and have Group Admin permissions to create Groups within your account. Use the resources below to identify your plan type and locate your System Administrator to verify if you're listed with Group Admin permissions:

• https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2476781-identify-smartsheet-plan-user-type
• https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1554165-managing-groups-team-business-enterprise-

 Thanks!

ToriLynn

David SCOTT Johnson

Hi ToriLynn,

Thank you for responding. However, contrary to your answer, just now I was able to get the Distribution list to work! I needed to open the Distribution List so that it could receive e-mails from the Internet. Once that change propagated to our company's e-mail servers, a test automation from Smartsheets was successfully received by members of the Distribution list.

Perhaps we are talking about different functionality. I am happy to discuss further.

Regards,

Dave

Genevieve P.

Hi Dave,

I'm glad you were able to get it to work! I'll mark your response as the "Best Answer" so if anyone else is looking for this solution it will be easy to find.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Community Moderator

Joanna Vanderslice

Ah- how can I contact David to ask him how he did it?!

David SCOTT Johnson

Hello Joanna,

We are a very large company, so we have in-house tools to allow us to set-up email Distribution lists self-service. So I'm not going to bother with screen scrapes showing what I did explicitly since your company's approach to setting up Distribution lists may not look anything like what I would show.

In setting up my Distros, the one check-box I had to make sure was "unchecked" said "Block emails from the Internet". This rule was the deciding control. When it was checked, Distros did not work in Automations. When it was unchecked, they worked in Automations.

If you have similar capability, then allow emails from the internet. If not, then I suggest a conversation with your email administrators. Perhaps they will also need to put the Smartsheet "domain" that sends the automated emails on some sort of approved-list" at your company as well as allowing internet emails?

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Dave