Struggling to send automated approval requests to multiple contacts generated by formula

aaboueid

This is the formula in my Assignee Emails Column:=IF(Parent@row = 0, email@row, JOIN(CHILDREN(email@row), " ") + " " + email@row)

Then I get the emails populated throughout the hierarchy in Project Assignees column:

=IF(OR(COUNT(CHILDREN(ID@row)) > 20, COUNT(ANCESTORS(ID@row)) = 0), AssigneeEmails@row, INDEX(ANCESTORS(AssigneeEmails@row), 1))

As a work around, I tried to helper sheet with an Index function to return the Assignees onto my sheet:

=INDEX({ProjectAssignees}, MATCH(ID@row, {ID_}, 0))

Is anyone else having the same issue? Is automation able to send notifications to a formula generated contact list?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Ayman

Andrée Starå

Hi @aaboueid

To add to Aravind's excellent answer.

As far as I know, it's not possible to collect/create multiple contacts with a formula at the moment.

You could add multiple helper columns or multiple Workflows/Paths for the different options as a possible workaround.

Make sense?

Would that work/help?

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!

Andrée Starå

Hi @SDG&E CI Team: Kelly Dyer

Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's not possible at the moment, but it's an excellent idea!

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment

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!

Aravind GP

Hi Ayman,

I have contact list columns for approval created through formulas and the approval request automation does work well without issues. I get both notifications on web and mobile as well as emails. Check in automation settings to see the Automation Permissions. If the setting is "restricted", you can only trigger approval requests to people who are shared to in the sheet, If it is "limited", only to people who are shared to or within your organization.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Aravind.

aaboueid

Hi @Aravind GP,

Thank you for your response. my automation permissions are set to "unrestricted", and my automations work with a single contact column, "Assigned", what I am trying to achieve is to also copy all project assignees on the same automation.

Would it be possible for you to share your formula in your contact list?

thanks again.

Ayman

Andrée Starå

Hi @aaboueid

To add to Aravind's excellent answer.

As far as I know, it's not possible to collect/create multiple contacts with a formula at the moment.

You could add multiple helper columns or multiple Workflows/Paths for the different options as a possible workaround.

Make sense?

Would that work/help?

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!

aaboueid

Hi, @Andrée Starå, thank you for your comment.

I could have sworn that it was made possible to generate multiple contacts by using join & collect of email addresses in a contact list column that allows multiple contacts. I do remember many threads discussing the format and what type of delimiter to separate the addresses so the system can recognize them. That being said, I am not able to find those discussions no longer!

Regarding your suggested work around, If I created a helper column(s) " Following Assignee", for example, how would I get that to populate the contact on the next "sibling" or child row? I am using column formulas and my rows are contently moving (due to assignments being added, or project getting completed and archived. So I doubt referencing specific cells would work for my sheet.

Thanks again,

Ayman

SDG&E CI Team: Kelly Dyer

I'm struggling with the same issue. I want to create a formula that returns several email addresses in a field. This field will trigger an approval notification to the multiple email addresses. I've tried to separate the return values with a space, a comma and a semi-colon, but none of these results returns 3 separate email addresses.

As an example...here is my formula that isn't working. :-( *email addresses have been modified

=IF(OR(District@row = "BC", District@row = "EA", District@row = "CM"), "kd@y.com; kd@g.com; kd@s.com", "TS@s.com NA@s.com PS@s.com"))

Can anyone help? PLEASE :-)

Thanks in advance!

Kelly

Andrée Starå

Hi @SDG&E CI Team: Kelly Dyer

Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's not possible at the moment, but it's an excellent idea!

Please submit an Enhancement Request when you have a moment

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!