New! Clear cell automated action + change cell enhancement

Emily Eberle-Levine

Hi Community,

I’m the product manager for automated workflows at Smartsheet and am pleased to share two announcements with you.

First, you can now use a workflow to automatically delete the contents of a cell whenever the conditions you’ve set are met — and you can do it for multiple cells in the same row at the same time. This is a great way to automatically clear multiple fields (like assigned to, date due, flags, etc) if, say, a status changes to Canceled or Not Approved. 

To create a new clear cell value workflow, click on the Automation menu, then Create a Workflow. Inside the workflow editor, scroll down to the action selector and choose the Clear cell value action.

Second, we have added the ability to update multiple cells in a row using the same change cell value workflow. If you’ve already created multiple workflows and would like to consolidate them, click on the Automation menu, then Manage Workflows. Double-click one of your workflows, scroll down to the Change cell value action block, and click + Add another column for each additional column you want to update.

You can learn more about automated workflows in our  Learning Center.

As always, thank you to everyone who takes the time to send us feedback about automated workflows. Our roadmap (including each of the above releases) is shaped by feedback like yours so please keep it coming!

Sameer Karkhanis

Thanks @Emily Eberle-Levine and Smartsheet team. This is a great change action addition to the workflow automation.

Nick Burrus

Great addition to automations!

Steven Evans

Nice!

Andrée Starå

Thanks, @Emily Eberle-Levine & the Smartsheet team.

This is a fantastic addition to Workflows and will for sure save time.

Natasha Daniel

This is a fantastic feature that saves time! Now instead of clearing out certain cells each day, it's already done for me when I need to use the sheet for the day!

kj61152

@Emily Eberle-Levine

Hi there

I got a question here. When I try to use this "Clear Content" function, it works fine if I change the "triger cell" manually in the same sheet.

However, if I set up the "triger cell" with a inbound link from my another soruce file externally, it seems like the function "Clear Content" doesn't work any more, nor the function "Change Value"

Details pls refer to the snapshot below

Thanks

KJ

Genevieve P.

Hi @kj61152

The "Clear Cell" action is an action block which modifies a sheet automatically. This means that it cannot be triggered by inbound cell links or cross-sheet formulas as you've found, please see the note at the bottom of this help article: Trigger Blocks: Define When Your Workflow is Executed

Cheers,

Genevieve

Justin Ramos

@Genevieve P. Does the clear cell value automation not work for date columns? I don't see my date columns as options for the workflow when I go to set it up.

Thanks!

Justin Ramos

@Genevieve P. Just checked and I think because it was a start date column in project settings. I found a workaround for this

Genevieve P.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/302607#Comment_302607

Thanks for the update! I'm glad you were able to figure something out.

Lucie

Hi everyone,

Thanks @Emily Eberle-Levine and the Smartsheet team for continuously launching new features. This is a great platform, and this new feature is going to be very helpful.

I've been trying to set it up in a sheet that supports a Gantt chart. My columns are: Trigger for clearing cells, Predecessor, Duration, Start / End dates. I want the Duration cell to clear when the Trigger cell changes to a certain value. I have found that the duration cell will not clear when there is a predecessor in the same row. I need to have my predecessors in there though, so I'm not sure how to solve this.

@Justin Ramos-Flynn Would you be able to share more details about the workaround you found for the start date column? I'm wondering if I could use a similar approach to clear my dates cells instead of my Duration cells.

Thanks !

Justin Ramos

@Lucie the sheet I was using for start and end dates is our install calendar and not really a project. I just changed the project settings to match two random date columns and made new columns for our start date, duration, and end date (formula from start date and duration#: =[Install Date]@row + [Job Duration]@row - 1). It seems you can't use the clear cells automation when the dates are tied to the project settings

Chris Mondeau

@Emily Eberle-Levine great update! Been looking at some other solutions that @Justin Ramos-Flynn has been trying.

However, not being able to clear date columns or duration column when used in project settings proves challenging when we're trying to use resource management in 10,000ft.

Do you have any recommended workarounds for this or plans on updating clear cell to allow project setting changes?

Thanks!

itsnotbroken

Can I use multiple action blocks after each other in the same workflow?

1. Clear a cell
2. input a value in another cell

Genevieve P.

Hi @itsnotbroken

The Clear Cell and the Change Cell action blocks are both terminal actions; this means that no, you cannot have one after the other in the same workflow.

However, you could use a change from a Chance Cell workflow to trigger a second workflow that then clears a different cell.

Cheers,

Genevieve