Notification of changes to sheet

Jonathan Hughes

Apologies in advance, am relatively new to Smartsheet and so I may be doing something stupid, but any help much appreciated.

I am creating a sheet to share info with multiple teams across the business. I have included a column so people putting something on the sheet can choose from a drop down menu which team it is intended for (e.g. Heads of Region or our Senior Management Team):

I then created workflows in automation, which I had thought would notify only the people in the team or teams listed:

However, in the example in the first screenshot, the "Test" message only went to Heads of Region and not the SMT, i.e. I think it only goes to the first group named, rather than all groups in the cell.

If anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong or whether it simply can't be done to have multiple groups, that would be hugely helpful.

Many thanks

Jon

Dale Murphy

@Jonathan Hughes In my experience, the tool evaluates conditions left to right and stops when a condition is met. So you approach won't work as currently designed.

You could have several groups in the "Intended for". So you could select the top two or three groups in one condition. But it doesn't look like that is fool proof.

If your group-hierarchy was the equivalent of nested dolls you could have the full group leftmost and then all groups at the same level in the subsequent conditions working to the left. That sounds complicate to maintain!

You could build a workflow for each group; the tool will run all workflow that meet the trigger rule.

Cheers,

Dale

Jonathan Hughes

Thank you - and apologies for the delay in responding. I think your last idea might have to be the way to go unfortunately!

Jon

Paul Newcome

I personally still use individual workflows. I come from a time long before these expanded automations and never quite got the hang of them myself (admittedly never really tried to get the hang of them).

I like using individual workflows for a few different reasons.

1. I can be very specific with the naming convention of the workflow
2. It ensures each portion will definitely work
3. It makes it easier to troubleshoot when someone did not get an email because I know that it is not dependent on other workflows (as can happen with the nested workflows)
4. I can turn them on and off individually if I need to test/tweak something without having to shut down the workflows for everyone else

Jonathan Hughes

Thanks - all good extra reasons to make me feel better about doing what I think I might have to anyway!

Jon