Are we able to set triggers based on Color of a cell or Filter by Color?

Kevin M

Hello,

I want to know if Smartsheet Automation is able to set a trigger based on color. This will save a lot of effort on notifications.

Kevin

Brett Wyrick

I imagine that by "color of a cell", you're referring to the actual shading of a cell, not the "Colors" type of column, right? The "Colors" type column has these sort of options:

If you're referring to the color shading of a cell (or text color), there's no native way to create a trigger by the color shading or any formatting within a cell in Smartsheet.

But, you could create a trigger based on a value within a cell, and that cell (or whole row) could get colored by Conditional Formatting.

Example workflow: Status changes to "Blocked"

Before the workflow begins, Set Conditional Formatting to change all cells with "Blocked" in the Status Column to Red.

• Column "Status" changes to "Blocked".
• Create automation trigger "When rows are changed" when "Status" changes to "Blocked". Send alert to applicable parties.

Would that work? If your users are used to simply changing the shade of rows, you'd have to train them in this new method, but it wouldn't be very different.

Brett Wyrick

Hey Kevin, following up.

Smartsheet Student

Hey Brett,

Looking to do something in this same vein on one of our projects. We have a sheet that gets updated weekly with date milestones, and I have the highlight setting on where these cells are shaded in yellow if they were changed in the last 7 days. I have a column on the far left of my sheet that contains cells that I would like to shade yellow if there was a row change (ie if one cell is yellow in that row, this column will be yellow for the same time or something).

Is anything like this possible?