Help with Update Request

lnorton
lnorton
edited 01/12/22 in Smartsheet Basics

I am asking leaders to fill out a form for promotion nominations with 3-5 contacts/emails for stakeholder feedback. My hope was to automate a request to each contact once the leader had submitted the form. Each stakeholder would get an update asking for: a yes/no on support, reasons to promote, and blockers to promote.

Since you can not customize the label for a field on an update request (like you can on a form) and you cannot repeat the same column names... what would be the best way to proceed? Does anyone know a trick I am missing or an easier way to do this?

Answers

  • Genevieve P.
    Genevieve P. Employee Admin

    Hi @lnorton

    The way I would do this is to set up multiple columns in the sheet:

    • - 5 Contact Columns (3 set as Required in the original Form)
    • - 5 Yes/No columns
    • - 5 Comment columns (Reasons & Blockers)


    Then you would have 5 separate Update Requests triggered when a row is added, each sending to a contact in a different column, with the associated Yes/No field and Comment cells to update. The Sheet would look something like this:

    Here's an example of the Update Request configuration, to show how you could customize what columns are sent:


    This way you could capture up to 5 separate responses to the same Employee nomination in the sheet, and also identify who said what (ex. if one Stakeholder said yes but the other said no).

    If the sheet looks too large, you could add Summary columns at the beginning of the sheet to add together all the comments (and Hide the comment columns), or count how many of the Support columns say Yes/No and provide that as a number (and again, hide the individual Support columns then).

    Let me know if this makes sense and will work for your purposes!

    Cheers,

    Genevieve