FROM and reply to email address

So I have a sheet that has a form attached to it. We use this for our sales reps to enter sales, for an order entry person to enter them in. With this, we built automations to alert/email the order entry person of a new sale.

While multiple sales reps enter orders, there are times that the FROM address shows the registered smartsheet user; and other times it appears it is coming from me - due to me being the sheet owner.

How would one diagnose WHY it is coming from me sometimes, and coming from the entering rep at other times? I have examples that show almost the same exact items, and is part of the same automation - but 1 shows me (sheet owner) and the other shows the rep. What gives?

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Paul Newcome

It may have to do with whether or not the sales rep is signed in when they fill out the form. Try inserting a system generated column to capture who the row was created by and see if the automations that have the sheet owner name were created by a generic users and the automations that are coming through as from the sales person is created by the sales person.

Mtmoroni

Yes - they are logged in. That column is there, and recognizes the user (also form is locked to registered users only).

Paul Newcome

Hmm... You may want to reach out to support. In the meantime, maybe @Genevieve P or @Andrée Starå may have more insight. I don't use automations as much as I used to, so I may be missing something.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Mtmoroni

The name appearing in the alert will depend on how this alert is set up, and what the trigger is:

When an alert is triggered by a single user’s change(s) in your sheet, that user will now appear as the sender name for the notification email.

The sheet owner will appear as the sender name when the notification email delivers:

An alert triggered by multiple users’ changes in your sheet

You can see a list of the behaviour in the Release Notes for this feature, here.

Is it possible that sometimes the workflow is triggered just by one form submission, which then sends as an update from one user, and other times there are multiple submissions in the same minute, which then will send as an update from the sheet owner?

If this isn't the case, it would be helpful to see screen captures of how your workflows are built so I can try and replicate the behaviour and discover the cause for you.

Cheers!

Genevieve

Mtmoroni

OK - So below is the automation.

Next (1) shows that it is from me.

The last shot (2) shows its from the user that submitted the form.

At the bottom of both emails, it states the "You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to a workflow "Order Needed - Send to "Who needs to do the order"" - So i know its not a mix of automation tasks.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Mtmoroni

I see that the alert sends to Contacts in a cell.

Even though both emails only show 1 row being added, is it possible that two submissions came within the same timeframe, triggering the workflow once, but that there were two different Contacts to send to, so only one row is sent to each user?

In this instance the Sheet Owner would appear as the Sender of the alert, since it was triggered by two different people and sent out to two contacts.

Alerts will wait a few minutes to see if more changes occur before triggering, so two form submissions in one minute will be seen as the same trigger but triggered by different people (thus showing the Sheet Owner). I would check to see if more than one row was added within the same timeframe as that first alert (Dec 9th, 10:42am). If there are other rows added from the range 10:38am - 10:46am then this is why you're seeing the Sheet Owner.

Let me know if this is what you're seeing, or if this makes sense!

Cheers,

Genevieve

Paul Newcome

@Genevieve P Even if that isn't the problem in this instance, that is definitely some really great insight into how the automations work on the back-end!!

Mtmoroni

So, Image 1 here is for the one that shows that the email came from the sheet owner (above) which is me.

Image 2 is for the 2nd one, which came from the actual user.

Image 2 shows another order placed at 9:33AM, which was entered from a different user, AND the email came from that user.

So this kind of defuncts your thought @Genevieve P - Which I would have totally agreed with by the way. When 2 orders were sent in within 3 minutes of each other, the respected users name appears as the "sent from". But when no other order was submitted in close proximity, then it came from the sheet owner.

All 3 instances, they were sent to the same contact in the cell.

Genevieve P.

Haha, ok that's exactly the opposite of what I tested this morning and what the functionality says it should be.

Sometimes workflows can trigger immediately (within the initial 30 seconds) so I'm not surprised that the two rows that are 3 minutes apart sent as separate emails... but I am surprised at Image 1 and Email 1 coming from the sheet owner instead of the form submitter.

I suppose the last thing to check before reaching out to Support would be that your form is set to have users logged in to Smartsheet, and that Lauren's email/account is the exact same for those Created By rows, so it knows to link this to her account?

If this is set up correctly, you may want to raise this to Support as unexpected behaviour, outlining all that we checked here in this post.

Mtmoroni

Perfect - yes, the user must be logged in. the "Lauren" and "Sarah" are from their log ins.

I will escalate to support and see what they come back with. I will reference this community support as well.

Thank you!

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