Username Confusion for "Modified By"

I am tracking 400+ projects in a smartsheet that get updated via 25+ reports tailored to filter by project owner. For integrity monitoring I have a report that tells me changes made by timestamp and username using the Created, Modified, and Modified By system fields.

My smartsheet has automations, forms, and cell formulas that also make changes and those actions appear to get identified as being made by the next user who makes a change. This is confusing since they did not actually make the system triggered changes and this makes it much more challenging to sort out which changes that user actually did make.

Why is there not a username of "System"? Or to help with trouble shooting, a username of "System - <automation/form/cell name>"?

Or, am I missing a way to sort system triggered changes from user trigger changes?

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Accepted answers

Box2105

Hi James, I first discovered this what I added a column to track "days since created" (ref: =NETWORKDAYS([date created]@row, TODAY(0))

This formula was changing all rows and likely trigger by the first user to make a change each day. That user would show 400+ records changed by them.

I have since moved that calculation to a linked smartsheet and resolved that particular issue.

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James Keuning

appear to get identified as being made by the next user who makes a change

Can you provide more detail here? I'm going to jump right into what I think might be going on, and there is only a very small chance that I am right, but in the interest of pushing this conversation forward, I will put this out there. As far as I know, formulas do not trigger a change. At least not that I have encountered. And if they can trigger a change, that's something I want to know about! And I am wondering if this is obfuscating the issue you are reporting. So maybe we set aside formula "changes."

For changes triggered by automations and forms, I have never seen the behavior you are reporting, and I think you should review the audit trail and see if you can spot this happening, and then post that history here, with specific questions.

As for the idea that Modified By include the cell that changed and constituted the last "modification," and which would presumably be reported in the Modified By field, I think that is interesting, but that the end result might not be what you expect. If I have a record with 25 fields, and I change 16 of them, only the last cell triggers the Modified Date and By. When in fact, the fields were probably modified as part of one session or set of actions, and you are probably interested to know that 16 cells changed.

If I was facing the problem I think you are facing, I would use the audit history log, and parse that thing to get the data that I need.

Box2105

Hi James, I first discovered this what I added a column to track "days since created" (ref: =NETWORKDAYS([date created]@row, TODAY(0))

This formula was changing all rows and likely trigger by the first user to make a change each day. That user would show 400+ records changed by them.

I have since moved that calculation to a linked smartsheet and resolved that particular issue.

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