Need assistance with the Approval Notification

Ambika Sujir

Hello,

I hope you are well!

I have an approval workflow set up which triggers a notification when a new request comes in.

I'm the owner of the sheet and I have full access to it and my personal settings within Smartsheets also allows the email notifications. This was working perfectly fine until few days ago, I noticed that the notifications stopped going out.

No changes have been made to the sheets or to the workflow setup and Im not sure why the emails are not going out all of a sudden.

For testing purpose I made myself the approver and submitted a request. When I look within Smartsheets under the Bell icon, I do see the approval notification, but no email.

This is not an ideal for me because all the approvers of this workflow do not access Smartsheets and they need to be able to see the email.

Could you help me resolve this issue?

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ambika Sujir

Since you're receiving the alert within Smartsheet, this indicates that the workflow is being triggered and is working as it should, however there's an issue with the email being received. The most common cause for this is the Spam or Junk filters in a user's email account.

Have you checked your spam folder to see if Smartsheet's automated emails are now being routed there? I would recommend adding the domains in this Help Article to your company's safe sender list, see: Issue: Email Not Received from Smartsheet

Cheers,

Genevieve

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

Thank you for your reply!

Yes, when we rolled this out we ensured that the users had Smartsheets added to the safe sender's list.

I sat with them and submitted a request and watched for emails myself and it's not hidden in any folder even spam/junk. So I'm not sure what is happening.

Just to be double sure, I can followup with this particular user to check and make sure that the smartsheets is on the safe sender's list.

Can you confirm if all of them listed need to be added?

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ambika Sujir

It would be best if all of them were added, just so this doesn't happen for future emails! However the email coming from an automated alert will have the domain app.smartsheet.com , so that's the most important one.

If this is still happening after you have confirmed that this domain is added, you may want to create a Clone of this workflow to see if this re-subscribes your email address to the workflow. Then if this hasn't worked, please reach out to Support with screen captures of the workflow, the sheet name, the workflow ID, and an email address that is not receiving the emails.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

Thank you very much!

I will give it a try and get back to you.

Thanks,

Ambika

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

I had the user add all the domains listed to the safe sender's list. I created a clone of the workflow and submitted a new request. I do not see the workflow getting triggered (I don't see the notification in the system).

But the same workflow has been triggered when I have been listed as the approver. I'm not clear on what's going on or what to look at.

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/305180#Comment_305180

Hi @Ambika Sujir

Can you post screen captures of your workflow set up so I can see the different blocks? (Trigger block, Conditions, and who the Approval is being sent to?) But please block out sensitive data.

Thanks!

Genevieve

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

I hope you are well!

Here are the details that you requested.

1. The Approval workflow should be triggered when a new request is submitted.
2. There are 3 condition paths and all follow similar workflow except that the approver is different based on the conditions.
3. The value for the Contact comes from a cell. This cell is populated using a vlookup from an approval matrix created from another sheet. (The approver's name/email is populated correctly, but the workflow is not triggered to generate the notification)
4. All three condition paths have their individual response columns to save responses in.
5. I noticed that when I submit a request and I'm the approver, the value in the Approval status is 'Submitted' and the workflow has triggered the notification. But when a request is submitted to another approver this value is not set to 'Submitted'

Look forward to your response.

Thanks,

Ambika

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

I hope you are well!

Just wanted to follow up and see if you could find out the issue with the workflow?

If not, could you tell me how I can reach out to support to investigate this?

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ambika Sujir

My apologies for the delay, and thank you for all of this extra information! You can contact Support at any time from this page, here.

There are two details you mentioned that are important.

1 - the Value for the Contact (who to send to) is populated by a formula.

2 - when another user is the Contact, the column does not change to "Submitted". This indicates that the workflow isn't triggered at all, or is not able to send to the contact in that cell.

Can you post screen captures of how the formula returns the Contact in the cell? You can block out the contact name, I just want to ensure that the value is coming through as a Contact (with the circle next to it) and not as text. It would also be helpful to know exactly what formula you're using.

I see that the trigger is when the ID column changes. Will this ever be updated via a cross-sheet formula or cell-link?

Ambika Sujir

Hi Genevieve,

That is no problem at all!

I have reached out to support and I'll work with them to get this resolved. Once it's done I can come back and post here.

Thanks,

Ambika

Ambika Sujir

Hi,

I have a helper column (combination of 3 columns) which helps me pull the contact from the other sheet.

This is the formula in the Approver column:

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP([Helper_Senior_Manager]@row, {CS Manager Mapping Range 3}, 5, false), "")

The approver column is set as a 'Contact list' type and does not allow multiple values.

I even created a new workflow with just one condition path to test it out and it's the same issue where its not triggered.

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ambika Sujir

Thank you for this information! The last thing to look at is how the ID column is populated.

The trigger is when the ID column has a value. Is this an Auto-Number column?

Workflows that change a sheet (such as an Approval workflow) cannot be triggered by cross-sheet formulas, so the ID column would need to have a manual input of some kind.

Ambika Sujir

Hi Geneveive,

Happy Friday!

I tried all the steps that were outlined by the support, but nothing seemed to resolve the issue.

I had created a new workflow and it not work, but the second time I created the workflow it started working. Not sure what was wrong, but it seems to be working now.

Thanks,

Ambika

Genevieve P.

Hi @Ambika Sujir

Happy Friday!

I'm glad you were able to get it to work. If it doesn't seem to trigger in the future, it would be helpful to know exactly what the ID column is and how it's populated.

Cheers,

Genevieve