"When Triggered" Automations Behaviour

SteCoxy

A colleague of mine has sent me a question that has stumped me and has got me thinking my understanding of how automations work has been wrong. She sent me the following:

We have automations that are set up to send when triggered that send emails to support when someone requests access to one of our products and also a separate one to set up a ticket in remedy (so support doesn't need to). However, it looks as though when two people put in a separate request at the same time, they get grouped into the same email. This means that both requests go into one remedy ticket and one email to support instead of separate ones. Do you know if there's a way to stop this? I've attached a screenshot of what I mean.

I know to expect this behaviour with any frequency above when triggered, as it acts almost as a summary email notification but I was convinced when triggered would ensure separate email notifications.

Any advice and support on this would be greatly appreciated.

Paul Newcome

Are you using {{placeholders}} in the automation's subject or body?

SteCoxy

Hi Paul, not that I'm aware of. I will double check with my colleague though and come back to you.

SteCoxy

Hi Paul, I've just checked with my colleague who's advised that there are placeholders in the body of the email after all. There aren't any in the subject though. I've got a screenshot for reference below:

Does this alter the behaviour of the automation? Is there a better way of doing this?

Paul Newcome

Hmm... Usually placeholders break them up into separate emails.

@Andrée Starå Do you have any insight into this one?

Elizabeth Torrens

I would also like a way to break up the email messages into separate instances instead of causing them to be summarized in our copy of the messages that go out to the individual users.

Secondly, is there a known delay on the timing of how quickly those messages go out after the change is triggered? I have a user who checked a box causing an automated email to go out but he said it took place an hour after he made the change. The information here: https://help.smartsheet.com/learning-track/smartsheet-intermediate/alerts-reminders seems to only refer to hourly, daily, and weekly but the "when triggered" option in my experience usually runs within a few minutes of the change occurring.

Paul Newcome

@Elizabeth Torrens The "When Triggered" option is supposed to run as soon as the sheet is saved, but I remember seeing somewhere that it could be up to a 15 minute delay before the trigger is recognized. If there was a delay in the sheet being saved after the triggering change was made, that could impact the timing of the email. Plus the (up to) 15 minute delay on the Smartsheet side. Plus any kind of delays that could be from the email server side such as spam filtering and whatnot.