Is there a way to test to determine if a row includes an attachment?

We would like to be able to send users a reminder that they forgot to attach a file without having to open Smartsheet, look for the attachment and send an update request if the user fails to attach the needed file.

Since I can't find a way to reference attachments in an if statement, is there any other way to determine if the attachment exists?

Have a great weekend!

Lisa G.

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Accepted answers

Andrée Starå

Hi @Lisa Grantham

I hope you're well and safe!

You could use the record a date feature in a workflow to add a date when an attachment has been added.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2481986-set-the-current-date-with-record-a-date-action

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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All comments

Andrée Starå

Hi @Lisa Grantham

I hope you're well and safe!

You could use the record a date feature in a workflow to add a date when an attachment has been added.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2481986-set-the-current-date-with-record-a-date-action

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Jessica Gross

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/283457#Comment_283457

Hi Andrée Starå

I'm not sure I'm following your potential solution. I have the same question Lisa. Perhaps you could explain further?

In my situation, I have users fill out a form that they will need to add an attachment. They do not need to attach it right away but will need to eventually. I want to set an alert/reminder to send to the user to remind them to attach their documents. As far as I can tell the current alerts/reminders are triggered when an attachment is added or changed, not that it is blank. I do not want an alert to go to people who already have attached their documents and adding a row reminder is a manual process that needs to be constantly managed every time there is a new submission to the form.

Lisa Grantham

The solution Andree and Jessica suggested worked for my situation in conjunction with some conditional logic.

We need users to attach a document to a form depending on an action they request with the Smartsheet form. There are criteria for when submitting a document is mandatory and when submitting a document is voluntary.

The document attachment box is present in the form for both the mandatory and voluntary user. When either one attaches a document, Smartsheet records the date stamp as described in previous comments. If there is no attachment, no date stamp gets recorded.

I then built a workflow with logic that tests to see if the date stamp is populated and if the submission meets the criteria for mandatory document submission. When there is no date stamp (meaning no attachment was added) Smartsheet sends the mandatory users an update request. Voluntary users don't get any update requests. Mandatory users who attach the documents to the Smartsheet also don't get update requests.

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