Why does the message in my Workflow Email repeat?

Teresa Drury

I have created a workflow to send an email to the task owner when the task becomes past due. The task owner may be responsible for multiple past due tasks. When the email is generated, the message is repeated once for each row that met the criteria for the email. See attached screenshot for an example.

How can I fix this?

Ross Ihrig

Due to the alert being tied to a point in time, Tuesday at 8:00AM, it is grouping all of the rows that meet the conditional criteria and sending the multiple messages in a single email. If there are 2 or 10 past due rows, then the email will repeat itself 2 or 10 times respectively. It would be great if the tool could determine that the message is the same and remove the duplication, however I have not been able to determine how to do this.

Perhaps you could change the trigger for as soon as it goes past due for a single row per email. But you would lose the weekly follow up without setting up additional triggers.

I hope this helps in finding your solution

Teresa Drury

Thank you, Ross. I will try your suggestion to set the condition based upon the past due status of the task, rather than a weekly email.

Ross Ihrig

Due to the alert being tied to a point in time, Tuesday at 8:00AM, it is grouping all of the rows that meet the conditional criteria and sending the multiple messages in a single email. If there are 2 or 10 past due rows, then the email will repeat itself 2 or 10 times respectively. It would be great if the tool could determine that the message is the same and remove the duplication, however I have not been able to determine how to do this.

Perhaps you could change the trigger for as soon as it goes past due for a single row per email. But you would lose the weekly follow up without setting up additional triggers.

I hope this helps in finding your solution

Teresa Drury

Thank you, Ross. I will try your suggestion to set the condition based upon the past due status of the task, rather than a weekly email.

Teresa Drury

Unfortunately, changing workflow to send the email when the date is past does not resolve the issue. I still see the message repeat in the body of the email once for each row. Surely this is a bug! I can't imagine anyone designing it to work like this!

Teresa Drury

I have discovered the issue. When you use variables pulled from fields in the sheet in your subject line or the body of the email this causes the email text to repeat, even if the variable happens to be the same. I guess this makes sense since the field value could be different for each row that met the criteria for a reminder.

BWheel

Teresa hit the correct answer. When you send automated reminders and customize the message emails with dynamic information (i.e. {{blurb}}) the message will repeat for every applicable row.

Solved my problem. I have to dumb down my messages. Thanks Teresa!