Why i am getting one combined email when adding multiple entries in a form

Saravanan Kaliannan Krishnasamy

Hi Friends

Screen Shot 2021-07-28 at 2.45.21 PM.png

Hope you are doing good and staying safe! I am using Automation>Trigger>Alert someone feature to get email notification when user submits the form. I want to get individual email for each entry, however if user submits the form multiple times with different data, i am getting one combined email instead of individual email. This happens when user submits the form in short time (in a minute or two). Could you please advice how we can avoid? I cannot ask users to wait for few minutes before submitting another entry and i am looking forward to hear from you all. Please advice.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Saravanan Kaliannan Krishnasamy

I hope you're well and safe!

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s)/copies of the sheet(s) or some screenshots of the workflow? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@workbold.com)

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Faith Miller

Hi @Andrée Starå - I am also seeing this, where 2 entries into the form happen closely in time. This cause both entries to be displayed in one email to the person setup in the automated alert. This causes the form's responses in the email to be narrow and hard to read in the chart in the body of the email and attachments at the bottom of the email are unclear regarding which entry they belong to. This is causes confusion with my team and I'm hoping there is a way to ensure each form entry gets its own email alert, regardless of timing.

Thank you!

WillieBNZ

Did this one ever get resolved? Seeing a similar issue and looking into options?

Thx

Willie

Tracy M

I am having the same/a similar issue w/a workflow automation alert that is combining multiple alerts into a single email. Each of the alerts are set up to have a unique/custom Subject (with fields referenced to make them unique/dynamic), however I am receiving a single bundled alert. These email alerts need to be sent individually, as we are using them for audit purposes. Is there a setting I can change to ensure each alert is sent independently?

See attached.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Tracy M

I hope you're well and safe!

Placeholders will generate separate notifications when using placeholders with Alert or Update Request actions in change-based workflows 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.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

✅Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Tracy M

Hello Andrée Starå 

UPDATE: I found a workaround that will at least partially solve for my issues--as long as we don't have 7 trigger events that happen simultaneously (IMO--i think the work 'simultaneously' with Smartsheet is very loose, if two separate trigger events happen more than 5 minutes apart are considered simultaneous ;) ). Found this in the Placeholders page:

• When using the Message only alert type, any simultaneously triggered rows will be combined into a single notification.

I had this alert set up with Message only. I will update to include a link to the sheet.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To note, even if it the trigger events are for greater than 6 rows, we need to have separate emails sent out for audit purposes. Is there no way to "turn off" the bundled single email, so that each email alert goes out inependently? While sending a single email for multiple triggered events in a workflow automation may be seen as a feature, for me it is more of a bug (or a feature that should be able to be toggled off).

Thanks! -Tracy

Andrée Starå

@Tracy M

Happy to help!

You could still use the Message Only option as long as you add Placeholder information.

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to turn the bundled feature off.

I think it should work just fine if you trigger six rows and save and then trigger another six rows. Have you tested that?

✅Remember! Did my post(s) help or answer your question or solve your problem? Please support the Community by marking it Insightful/Vote Up or/and as the accepted answer. It will make it easier for others to find a solution or help to answer!

Harper141

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/330434#Comment_330434

I am running into this issue as well. I do have placeholder information in my workflow, but it is set to Message Only - and it is combining email alerts. I do not want to include the link to the sheet. Is there no way around this?

me_user

@Andrée Starå

I have been running into this, and can't find a solution. I do have placeholder information (around 10 placeholders or more), but it is a message only alert. I thought maybe autosaving every 30 seconds would help, but unfortunately it only allows as low as 1 minute.

Marlana K.

Running into something very similar with workflows.

We have a multi-sheet, multi-form process for Equipment Loss Prevention. We have a master list, a new employee intake form that copies rows to the master list, and an employment termination exit form which I have some complex formulas that will update only certain fields in the master sheet to generate an update request for review.

We run a quarterly audit that is sent to the employee supervisor to review and ensure that the information and equipment they were issued has not changed. During testing I received the email that contained 300+ entries. This will be sent out by supervisor going forward and we do not want them to receive all of these lumped into a single notification.

Process

Update Request Quarterly Audit

Triggers Every 3 months on day 1

Condition : Employee Status is one of Active

Sends to contacts in a cell : Supervisor email

Message with 44 Fields

They only work around I can come up with is create a column called Groups and assign each employee to a Group Number with no more than 5 -6 employees in that group then create additional workflows based on group number. However that leaves room for error as new employees are copied into the sheet from the Employee Intake Form/Sheet will not have a Group Number assigned. Possibly we could do a Nested IF with COUNTIFS statement that looks at the Supervisor and Groups and assign a group. Guess I need to do some testing!

The life of a SME :)

Erin Demse

The bundled messages are a source of annoyance for me. I have a daily request update automation set up to send piped text in the message and columns to be updated, but if more than about 5 rows are created at once (I'm using data shuttle to append new rows from a file in Box) then the message is bundled together and all the important piped text data is stripped and the user has no idea what to do with it.

Bundled messages should be something we can opt out of when creating automations.

kimmoynes

Why isn't this something that can be an option? I've created specific subject lines to help staff better understand the workflows and if they're bundled together it overrides that information. I'm trying to get hundreds of people on board with a process and this is hindering it.

AirlineDataGuy

Still having this problem.

I have 10+ placeholders in my "message only" as well.

LaurenLong

I would also LOVE to turn off the bundled option as well so that the automations will send out individual emails.