Workflow Triggered Unexpectedly

Amy Arnold

I created individual workflows to trigger weekly on Thursdays if the following conditions were not met:

● Created "is not today" AND

● Center "is one of" <center>

At the specified time an email was sent to the designated recipients to remind them to submit an update.

In most cases, the center submitted its update the same day and before the workflow was scheduled to trigger.

Here's a closer look at the conditions. The center column is a dropdown (single select) item that is restricted to the values only so it's not a spelling error.

Issue, the individual workflows were triggered for everyone which were centers who submitted their update and those who did not.

➡ How do I create the workflow so it only triggers when the conditions are NOT met?

➡ Then, is it possible to have one workflow instead of individual workflows for each center?

Thank you

Genevieve P.

Hi @Amy Arnold

Are you keeping the historical records in this same sheet? If so, there will be many rows that meet the conditions you've set, so the workflow will be triggered.

For example, if your users submit a row last week, then that row in the sheet does not have today's date but it will have the correct Center filled in, and therefore that row will match the condition for the reminder.

It sounds like you're trying to trigger an alert by what's not present, versus what is present. Workflows require an associated row to run off of, so this makes it a bit tricky. We can set up a recurring alert/reminder workflow, but it would send no matter what's happened in the sheet.

What I would suggest doing is have a number of set, locked, helper rows at the very top of the sheet to be your source for the workflow. These should always stay in the sheet, and each of them would have an associated Center.

Then what you could do is have a formula that looks in the sheet to see if there is another row that has today's date as the submission date, matching the Center. We would use this row as the source for the workflow and then filter by the information that the formula will bring back. Does that make sense?

I always find images help explain, so here's what the sheet could look like:

Formula I used:

=IF(MAX(COLLECT([Created Date]:[Created Date], Center:Center, Center@row)) = TODAY(), "Submitted Today", "No Submission Today")

Note that you'd need to have your form submissions come in at the bottom of the sheet so they don't bump your "Alert Row" out of place. (You can always create a Report if you want to only show specific dates easily).

Then I'd set up the workflow with these as the conditions. You can potentially create one workflow (depending on how many rows you have), by adding additional Condition Paths:

Let me know if this makes sense and if it will work for you!

Cheers,

Genevieve