Smartsheet Update seemingly broke my database. Mass Update Requests sent out

Kyle Cannella

Not sure what happened. Originally, I had a 3 step process for my database/form. A report is filled, followed by a Lead Review, followed by a Supervisor Review.

There are 2 databases. 1 is the main database, the other is a secondary database for doing lead review. The second database is my work around for Smartsheet not having dynamic update forms. It works seamlessly.

What happens is a report is filled, the report gets copied over to database 2. In database 2, an email is sent to the person labeled as Lead Reviewer (done in the original report). This email contains a link to database 2's form, which is dynamic. After database 2's form is submitted, the data from database 2 is transferred back to database 1 via formulas. Supervisor review is then done via an update request workflow. What sparks it is when a column from database 2 is transferred over, the value goes from blank to "any", thus sending the update request.

The original report and Lead Review still work fine, except Supervisor review has been bricked for some reason. It worked fine consistently for over a year and was last tested about a week or two ago. The issues began today, seemingly for no reason (also in a meeting with my boss talking about how the project is done haha).

It is sending mass emails asking for updates to random rows that have been updated or have already sent their supervisor review request weeks-months ago. I'm not sure what caused this. This is the first time this error has occurred for me.

Sorry this was kind of vague. Was there any Smartsheet updates that likely caused this?

Paul Newcome

Have you checked the activity log for the sheet that sends the automation?

Leah Rankin

Did you get any resolution to this or have you had it recur? I just had a very similar thing happen to me for the second time overnight last night where some automated process re-issued all pending update requests on one specific sheet. I have double and triple checked the activity log to make sure that no changes were made to the sheet that could have caused this and have come up empty handed. Did you have any clues to make you think it was an update on their end that caused this? From what I can tell, there is nothing on our end that could have resulted in this and the emails all went out around midnight.