Automation Workflow not following trigger specified

GeorgiaL

Hi

I have a sheet set up to track an award process for employees. Overview of process is:

Employee complete nomination form set up in smartsheet

Approval request triggered to Line Manager, (if approval is not completed a 10 day chaser is sent) example of chaser automation which works:

Once Line Manager has approved an automation is triggered to the P&L approver to submit their approval

I am having issues setting up similar automations for P&L approval chasers at 10 days. I have attempted to set up in the same way but the issue is that once Line Manager submits approval this seems to be triggering the usual P&L as well as the 10 day chaser even though the trigger has not occurred to set this automation off -( star in 1st P&L chaser is not starred in sheet)

Anyone know what i am doing wrong here?

Jeff Reisman

@GeorgiaL

What does the 1st P&L approval process automation look like? How about the automation that changes the P&L 1 Chaser field to Starred?

GeorgiaL

Hi Jeff

Thanks for your response.

This is the automation for 1st P&L Chaser :

There is no automation to change the field to starred, this is a formula i have used which appears to be working.

Formula: =IF(AND([Line Manager Status]@row = "Approve", [Line Manager Approval Date]@row < TODAY(-10), [P&L Approval Response]@row = ""), 1, "")

The formula is working and changes the field to be starred however the automation (as pictured above) is sending the P&L chaser as soon as Line Manager approves rather than when the P&L chaser is not starred - as per automation?

GeorgiaL

Apologies, i misread your note.

The first update request that goes to P&L approver is:

The P&L approver should only get the 1st chaser if it has been 10 days since receiving the above message.

Jeff Reisman

@GeorgiaL Sorry for the delay in responding, I missed the notification.

You've got a lot of moving parts there, hard to track down what might cause the chaser to be sent right away.

Here's something to try:

Add a helper date-type column called "ChaserDate," with formula =[Line Manager Approval Date]@row + 10 which sets the date for the chaser request to be sent (10 days after Line Manager Approval Date.)

Change your P&L Chaser update request automation trigger to be time based:

Run once on ChaserDate, with a condition that [P&L Approval Response]@row is blank.

See how that goes.

cjhagerman

My automation is doing the same thing. It's sending daily reminders even though the conditions are not met. I tried modifying the conditions, and it's doing the same thing.