Ability to 'CC' someone on an autommation

Matthew_Lanterman

Hello,

I have a standard alert for when a task is marked 'Complete' to send the Owner of that task an alert. I also need the same email alert to go to two other people.

In other words when the task is complete, send Owner + 2 others an alert. Where the Owner is different for each task but the 2 others remain the same

How can I tag the additional two email addresses to the alert without creating a custom automation for each Owner?

Jeff Reisman

@Matthew_Lanterman

If I create an alert, and I set it to send to contacts in a cell, and the cell contains John and Sally, John is going to get an email sent to him and only him, and Sally is going to get an email sent to her and only her. John's email won't show Sally's email address on the "To:" line next to his email address, and vice versa for Sally.

So whether you send the notifications from the same action block or separate action blocks makes no difference to what the recipient is going to see in their email.

I set up a test notification to go to Contacts in a cell, and the contacts had my work email and my personal email. This is what the alert to my work email shows:

And the one to my gmail account only shows my gmail on the To: line. (It only shows my work address because it's my workflow, so I'm the reply to address.)

And if I set the alert to go to Specific people and I list both my email addresses, they send the same way. The recipient does not get to see the list of other recipients. So you won't be able to track and respond to alerts via a conversation with all the recipients.

Jeff Reisman

@Matthew_Lanterman You can add an additional action after the alert that goes to the task Owner. Just click the next blue dot with a + sign, below the first alert and select " + Add an action":

Select "Alert someone" and set it to send to specific people.

Matthew_Lanterman

Hi @Jeff Reisman - I think that creates a separate email notification, right?

I want one notification to go to the two designated contacts, plus the contact in the contact column.

Jeff Reisman

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/328981#Comment_328981

Sorry for the delay responding - been down with Covid...

When setting up alert notifications, you can only choose one type of recipient in the Action box.

So if you want to send a notification to contacts in a cell AND to specific people, you need two Action blocks - one for selecting contacts in a cell, and another for selecting specific people to be notified.

Matthew_Lanterman

Hi @Jeff Reisman - hope you are recovering quickly.

The two action blocks wont accomplish the goal I am after. Each action block will generate a separate notification, where I need one notification to be sent to the Owner and the 2 other people.

I'll continue to think on this one.

Jeff Reisman

@Matthew_Lanterman

It's the same notification though. It's part of the same workflow. The same information can be sent in both. They both send at the same time. I just tested this to be sure.

Can you elaborate on why they have to be part of the same action block? Even if you have 5 people listed in the notification, each one gets an email addressed only to them. It doesn't include the other recipients in the To: field.

Paul H

@Matthew_Lanterman

It wouldn't technically be a CC, but you could address the custom message to the Owner, making it clear who the email is for.

Edit:

You could also add "CC'd to {{CC People}}" to the message if you want to show who else it was sent too

Jeff Reisman

I think your only other option may be to create some formula that adds the owner and the specific individuals to another Contact type cell based on criteria.

Matthew_Lanterman

@Jeff Reisman they need to be the same action block so we only have one alert to track. If we send the same info from Smartsheet to both Owner and CC people, there are 2 emails.

We just want to be able to start and track a conversation, via email, for any questions that may come up as a result of task completion. The CC people could forward the completion to the owner if there are questions, but I was looking to see how remove the forwarding step all together.

@Paul H - if we go your route - we would have to allow multiple contacts in the contact column, and add the CC people to each row, right?

Paul H

@Matthew_Lanterman

Yes you need two columns, one for the owner and a multiselect contact for the people to be "CC'd"

Jeff Reisman

@Matthew_Lanterman

If I create an alert, and I set it to send to contacts in a cell, and the cell contains John and Sally, John is going to get an email sent to him and only him, and Sally is going to get an email sent to her and only her. John's email won't show Sally's email address on the "To:" line next to his email address, and vice versa for Sally.

So whether you send the notifications from the same action block or separate action blocks makes no difference to what the recipient is going to see in their email.

I set up a test notification to go to Contacts in a cell, and the contacts had my work email and my personal email. This is what the alert to my work email shows:

And the one to my gmail account only shows my gmail on the To: line. (It only shows my work address because it's my workflow, so I'm the reply to address.)

And if I set the alert to go to Specific people and I list both my email addresses, they send the same way. The recipient does not get to see the list of other recipients. So you won't be able to track and respond to alerts via a conversation with all the recipients.

Luis Martinez Ruiz

This is one of the many annoying issues (opportunities) of Smartsheet.

kelseysullivan

Has anyone figured out how to do this?

JPZ

I was able to get this to work by creating 2 "Contact" fields… and then using Smartsheet's concatenation rule to put those together in a new contact field (and selected to use multiple contacts in the same field). I then linked the multiple contact field to an automation/email rule.

Michael M_

I agree a cc field would be really useful. We have lots of alerts that go to Employees and we would like cc another department such as payroll. Sending two separate To: emails is absolutely not the same.