Upcoming changes to our automated notifications - live today 17th April 2020

SueinSpain · 04/17/20

Today the proposed changes to automated update requests / notification has now got the OWNER's name in the email.

This is causing us absolute chaos.

Update requests have been sent out and as they now have the owner’s name (in our case this morning Kirsten Cox) the owner is now receiving lots of emails from people asking questions about the update request.

Kirsten, as a licenced user, has created the smartsheet but it is being used and operated by another team member.

Kirsten has no involvement in the content but is now inundated with a 100 emails.

To add further panic – we currently have 32 smartsheets as a new adopter, Kirsten has created about 4 and I have created all the rest – so I’m likely to be absolutely swamped.

Is there any way we can

Turn it off / revert back to from Smartsheet
Put someone else’s name as showing who the update requests are from (in this example James Potter a team member and free user)

Really need urgent help on this matter as just starting a major testing cycle with approximately 400 test plan over the next 10 days and if all update request emails are going to come from the owner….. well just don’t know how we will cope.

Paul Newcome · 04/20/20

@SueinSpain I go an email 8 days prior letting me know the change was coming. I have seen a lot of people asking "Can the email come from me instead of Smartsheet" in the past, so I think that may be what they were working from based on the Product Enhancement Requests, and that was their study to see who/how many were wanting the change.

I suggest submitting one of your own that details exactly how you want it to work.

I will also dig around and see if I can find the thread that shows how to sign up for such notifications.

Paul Newcome · 04/20/20

If you go HERE and look at the 7th comment down, you should see a link you can click on to sign up for notifications about this kind of thing.

Genevieve P. · 04/22/20

Hi all,

I want to say thank you for your feedback, and for filling out the Product Enhancement Request form with your concerns. I have also been sending your feedback from this thread to our Product team, so they're aware of the ways that this change is currently impacting your companies.

This change was influenced directly by customer feedback about low read and response rates to their alerts and requests. We dug into the issue and found that the impersonal nature of the generic “Smartsheet Automation” name was a key contributor to that problem.

Up until this release, the generic “Smartsheet Automation” name in the From field has made it more likely that recipients will not respond to or simply ignore alerts, reminders, and requests when they’re sent via email. This is particularly true for people who don’t use Smartsheet (or only do so infrequently).

In regards to now suddenly receiving a number of replies to these alerts, please keep in mind that the reply-to address for automated update and approval requests until this change was “automation@smartsheet.com”. That meant that replies to request emails were sent to an unmonitored account, and were not seen by anyone in your company. This change ensures that questions or comments about a request are now seen and can be responded to.

Please do continue to fill out the Enhancement Request form or discuss different alternatives to your current automations here. If any of you have questions about specific functionality (for example, who's name will show with this type of alert or if these types of changes were made) then please feel free to post here and tag me, with a pictured example of your type of workflow. I will be happy to help identify if that specific workflow has been updated with this change and clarify if there is a new way it will appear in an inbox.

Thank you,

Genevieve

JLC · 04/17/20

@SueinSpain grateful to not have mass chaos on our end right now like you're seeing but I agree this was not a great plan. I am also a Sys Admin on our account but did not receive any notification about this upcoming change - however, someone else on my team received an email about it from "Scott Tewel". Wondering why this wasn't blasted to all users, or at least to system administrators and/or sheet owners. I was on a team previously and had set up a large handful of automations which are still being used today - and now, without prior warning (to me at least), they're all being sent out with my name attached to them. Frustrating!

Joseph Endter · 04/17/20

I am having this same issue. I submitted a case, #03913373, if any of you want to reference that in communications with the help desk.

JLC · 04/17/20

Thanks @Joseph Endter!

Paul Newcome · 04/17/20

Change who owns the sheet(s) to be whoever should be responsible for the data within the sheet(s).

In the case of @SueinSpain's example of Kirsten creating the sheet but having nothing to do with the content of the sheet, Kirsten can transfer ownership of the sheet to the other team member who is actually operating it.

EDIT: Although I do feel it would be helpful to be able to specify "who" it is coming from instead of defaulting to the sheet owner. In a lot of cases for me, it would make more sense if the client received an email from "Company I Work For" instead of me personally.

JLC · 04/17/20

@Paul Newcome can't disagree with that in general and I'll do that for the specific sheet I've built the most automations in and still own when I don't have to anymore. However, what about when a sheet is managed by multiple people/roles?

EDIT - let the page sit open and didn't see your edit. Totally agreed, maybe a default to sheet owner but option to update if needed?

Paul Newcome · 04/17/20

Or in the case of one I had forgotten about until I just got it...

I have a form set up so that a client can alert us when they ship us something. Not when I ship us something but hen the client ships us something.

They shipped us something and submitted the form, and the email coming from me as the sheet owner makes it seem as if I shipped it. I definitely don't like that at all. Even after I transfer ownership to the person who will manage the sheet long term, it will look like it is coming from them when in all reality it is meant to be a notification from the client.

I know I personally will be working out a Product Enhancement Request for this...

SueinSpain · 04/20/20

Thanks for everyone's comments. I think our only short term option is to use our "spare" licence, set that up with a default do not reply email address and move ownership to that licence.

I am somewhat horrified that

a) we didn't get notification prior to going live that it was going live Friday 17th

b) did this go through feasibility study to see if the majority wanted it and any workaround for those that didn't

Paul Newcome · 04/20/20

@SueinSpain I go an email 8 days prior letting me know the change was coming. I have seen a lot of people asking "Can the email come from me instead of Smartsheet" in the past, so I think that may be what they were working from based on the Product Enhancement Requests, and that was their study to see who/how many were wanting the change.

I suggest submitting one of your own that details exactly how you want it to work.

I will also dig around and see if I can find the thread that shows how to sign up for such notifications.

Paul Newcome · 04/20/20

If you go HERE and look at the 7th comment down, you should see a link you can click on to sign up for notifications about this kind of thing.

Michael LaPlante · 04/20/20

I wholeheartedly agree on all points. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect this may be a way Smartsheet gets companies to buy more licenses - i.e. instead of me being the single owner/license holder and creating things for others, now if those others don't want my name showing up in the 'From' line they'll have to buy a license in order to be the owner on the 'From' line. Do I have that right? Regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, it still seems like a poor solution for Smartsheet to implement this without a way to select the old 'From' method...

Jose Figueroa · 04/20/20

This is really bad for us... Has anyone found a way to turn it off or change the email address?

SueinSpain · 04/20/20

No I raised a ticket with Smartsheet but no luck. We are using a license with an automated email address so any replies will go in a shared mailbox with an automated reply - this isn't accessed so please contact the person responsible for this business area. we will then transfer ownership of the smartsheets to this.

It is a workaround, also suggested by smartsheet, and a bit of a pain especially when you want to create new smartsheets but best we can come up with for now.

please put in an enhancement request to get changed so we have the option to

a) leave as it was

b) user owner

c) divert to a fixed email address for that smartsheet maybe

Our issue is because we have 2 smartsheet administrators who create & design all our smartsheets to build knowledge, enforce standards etc. etc. but the results are used across the company.

Ella · 04/20/20

We had no clue this change was coming. Not happy with it. It's not just coming from the sheet owner, but whoever makes changes in the sheet, his/her name appears on the notification. It should not be like this.

Kate_ · 04/21/20

We are having the same problem. I've suddenly started receiving a lot of emails as staff think its me contacting them. Is there a way of reverting back?

Paul Newcome · 04/21/20

@Kate_ There currently isn't a way to revert back unfortunately. There is a link further up in the Comments as well as on the right side of the web page under the "Additional Resources" section (and here) that will allow you to Submit a Product Enhancement Request which is essentially casting your vote for a change. Please feel free to provide as much detail in that as you can regarding what you would like to see changed and why, and don't hesitate to include a link to this thread.

Upcoming changes to our automated notifications - live today 17th April 2020

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