Automation not running as expected

dylantop

I am having an issue where my automation is not sending out the email notification when triggered. I have two automations tied to a ticket when the status changes to 'completed'. One will run and work but the other does not, it does not show in the automation pop up that it is running either, it just shows when it was last modified. Can someone help?

Jeff Reisman

@dylantop

When you have a Move Row automation with the same trigger as an Alert notification, you're going to run into problems. It has to do with the way Smartsheet handles alerts.

With Alerts, once triggered, Smartsheet waits about a minute or so to see if there are any other rows out there changing to meet the criteria, so that it can group the alerts if possible. Smartsheet does not wait with Move Row automations though, so by the time Smartsheet says to itself "Ok, I'll send that alert now," the row is gone, and now it has nothing to alert about.

The workaround:

You'll need a helper column. Call it "Move Trigger". You can hide it. At the end of the Alert automation rule, add an action to Change a Cell value to set the "Move Trigger" column to 1.

Then change the trigger on your Move Row automation to move when the Move trigger field changes to 1.

So now, your alert gets sent, and THEN the row gets marked as ready to Move, and then the Move Row automation does its thing.

dylantop

@Jeff Reisman thanks! I tried this and it now says that the automation ran, and it did populate the 1 in the Move Trigger column. However, the alert is still not being sent..

Jeff Reisman

@dylantop Well dang, I wonder if the timing is still off?

How urgent is it that the row get moved right away? Could it happen hourly instead of right after the status changes to Complete?

dylantop

@Jeff Reisman I get this error when trying to change the timing.