Automation occasionally works

Brian Erfman

I have set up automation to start an approval process every time a new line is added. That automation has worked without fail for the last 9 out of 12 months. It is the last three months it hasn't worked like it use to. Now in the last three months, if I use a form to add a new line to a smartsheet, the automation works everytime, however if I add a new line directly to the smartsheet, the automation use to work, but no longer does. Anyone have any ideas? Below is the automation to request approval from the manager. It is triggered when a row is added and the created column is equal to any value. The Created column is an auto numbered date so every new request has a date assigned. Can someone tell me why this automation works great when I used a form to add data to the smartsheet, but when I put in the data directly into the smartsheet the automation will not work.

Thank you

Genevieve P.

Hi @Brian Erfman

There are a few troubleshooting steps we can try here... the first one would be to clone the workflow and see if that has changed the behaviour back to what's expected.

The second one would be to change what column is used for the Trigger of the automation. I tested on my own sheet and a System Column should work without an error, however I'd like to test on your sheet if it helps to have a different column as the trigger since the trigger is when a row is added. Can you adjust this to be based on your Primary Column, or another column you know will always be manually filled out with each new row creation?

If neither of this has helped, I would then recommend reaching out to Smartsheet Support with a recording of each behaviour (via a form and via a manual entry in the sheet), along with the sheet name, and the workflow ID (under "Properties" of the workflow).

Thanks!

Genevieve