How to avoid alerts from batching up

Dale Murphy

I am building workflow that sends a form submission to email, which is read by an API that strips the content and pushes it into another tool.

When several submissions of the form arrive close together, SmartSheet bunches them all into one email message. That breaks the integration.

Ideas on how to avoid that?

Andrée Starå

Hi @DMurphy

I hope you're well and safe!

If you use the Placeholder feature you can force them to send one by one up to six alerts.

When using placeholders with Alert or Update Request actions in change-based workflows, placeholders will generate separate notifications if six or fewer rows are triggered simultaneously. If seven or more rows are triggered at once, the custom subject and body will be removed.

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Dale Murphy

Thanks @Andrée Starå .

I was reading those conversations from a few years ago. What qualifies as a placeholder?

Dale

Andrée Starå

@DMurphy

Happy to help!

You can reference any column, but make sure that the value is unique for each row.

Something like this.

{{Created}}

Would that work?

More info: 

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2477796-dynamically-add-cell-data-in-the-subject-and-body-of-request-messages

✅Remember! Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support 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!

Dale Murphy

Thanks again @Andrée Starå

I found a guy ... who will build some PowerShell scripts to do data extraction and injection into our ServiceNow tool. Very cool.

Dale

Andrée Starå

@DMurphy

You're more than welcome!

Glad you found a solution.

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ChrisMcG

I have kind of a related question to this: Is there an easy way to contain/ limit batches?

Our shipment team may load 100 rows of data into the sheet that triggers one email now. BUT from a processing standpoint they are easiest to handle in "like" groups.

So, if sett 1 has ten pieces, I'd like an email alert to go out for just those ten. If set 2 has 6 pieces, just those six, etc. There is no solidly consistent number that I could say "every ten rows" in a limiter, and would LOVE to not put the onus on the shipper to save and wait after every set.

gcoffey

Hi,

I used a unique placeholder {{employee ID #}} in both the subject and the body and the submissions are still batching in groups of less than 6. Any ideas for fixes?