I set up some automation conditions on my sheet to test but I'm not getting any email responses

Michelle Barnett

I checked my personal settings and I am set up for notifications on sheet changes. I set up my trigger to fire on a task being modified by a date being added but it's not working.. - any suggestions? - Thank you.

Michelle Barnett

Thank you, I'll try that and let you know!

Bassam Khalil

Hi @Michelle Barnett 

Hope you are fine, am sorry but the screenshot you add isn't clear could you please share me as admin on a copy of this sheet (after removing or replacing any sensitive information). so i could design the workflow for you.

Michelle Barnett

Sure, I appreciate you looking at it. Here are two workflows both dependent on the same row. The first one is supposed to fire when someone changes the value of row 2, which is Enter start date. This is supposed to send an email alerting the team to a new onboarding. The next is supposed to fire an alert to the manager as the person is coming up on their 180 day review. It's a calculation that counts 160 days from the date contained on row 2. I changed the formula to just a day so I could test it, but I'm not getting an email from either one. I know email is working because I'm getting emails from other sheets and forms, just not this one. If you have some idea, that would be great! Thank you for your help.

Michelle Barnett

Sorry I can't give you admin access to my sheet.

Genevieve P.

Hi @Michelle Barnett

What change are you making in the sheet? It looks like you have your trigger set to a formula, which won't be able to trigger the workflow.

For example, I see you have the text "=date2 +1"

I presume this means you want the alert to send one day after the date in the Date column, is that correct? If so, you'll actually want to change your trigger to be based on a date instead of when rows are "changed", like so:

See: Create a Time-Based Automated Workflow

If this isn't what you were looking to do, it would be helpful to see a screen capture of the underlying sheet, identifying the change that you want to trigger the workflow (but please block out any sensitive data).

Cheers,

Genevieve

Michelle Barnett

Hi Genevieve,

Thanks for looking at my question. I am trying to fire a workflow on a date, but the trick the date is variable. It's actually 160 days past Date2 and Date2 is filled out by the user by a hiring event. I only have it set for 1 day for testing. I tried to use date, but only allows for a given date in the sheet and the date could be anything depending on the hire date of a person. That's why I moved to task. I've tried adding a condition too, but formulas aren't working there either.

The task Meet with HR to review probation performance needs to trigger an alert to let every know when 160 days from the hire date happens.

thanks,

Michelle

Genevieve P.

Hi @Michelle Barnett

Thanks for clarifying!

The way to do this would be to set up another Date column in your sheet to automatically calculate the correct date, or + 160 days after the date to the left.

I would suggest making this a Column Formula (see here) so you never have to worry about adding it in. You can even hide the column in your sheet and never look at it again.

Then in your workflow, use this helper column as the trigger, and have the condition be that the Task Name is "HR Check In". Note that my trigger is "When a date is reached" and then I selected my helper column called "160 Days" as the Date Field.

Does that make sense?

Let me know if I can explain anything further!

Cheers,

Genevieve

Michelle Barnett

Thank you, I'll try that and let you know!

Michelle Barnett

it was a combination of all the ideas that helped it work. I added a column with and added 160 to that then I added the date column to evaluate it and it worked.