Is there a way to capture email as an automatic row record in Smartsheet

Alla · 06/08/22

Me and my assistant are the only Smartsheet support for our company. I am trying to utilize Smartsheets for capturing issues as tickets. I have a dedicated email account for tickets. I am using the form for people to request support. But many times they will send email vs submitting the form. Is there a way to convert/transfer each email as a record on the Smartsheet (add a row with capturing some information from the email?

Although I am new to following, we have those at our disposal for integration purpose:

Smartsheet Bridge

SharePoint

OneDrive

Power Automate

Alla · 06/09/22

Thank you all for your feedback. I was able to achieve the following:

when the email is received, I use Microsoft PowerAutomate to parse it and add a row to excel (I needed essential: sender's name, email subject, body, and time received.
I used data shuttle to map info into Smartsheet.
Then move the row from the email sheet to my ticketing smartsheet to assign tickets and do the rest of the work.
The challenge is ensuring I don't duplicate the ticket from the email sheet. I have converted the date received into a number, so I have a unique key id. Using simple Index/match formula, I can identify if I already have that unique key id in my ticketing system.
The second challenge is what to do with the duplicate. I wish Smartsheet had automation to delete the row. As a workaround, I created a workflow where duplicates will be moved to Garbage/duplicate Sheet. I have created a blank excel sheet with just one row of random info. I have used data shuttle to replace all, so my garbage sheet stays clean.

I will submit an enhancement request. We should be able to automatically capture/match Outlook Fields (not necessarily parsing the body of the email-although it would be nice to have the ability to put keywords in the email that it could look for) into the Smartsheet. My only issue with the workflow above is that I am not able to capture the attachments ☹️

Stefan · 06/09/22

Hi @Alla,

I think what you describe this is currently possible.

Currently Outlook and Gmail are integrated to add a whole email and/or attachment to a sheet/row in Smartsheet.

Even if some external automation tool could create rows from an email, how should it know what data to put into what column?

You better get your people to help improve data quality by using standard procedures like the form you provide. Make the form quick and easy and be patient ;-) You may also want to get rid of that ticket input email, because that opens the door for lazy people.

If you organisation uses MS Teams, you could add the form to a Teams channel.

Hope this helps!

Stefan

Andrée Starå · 06/09/22

Hi @Alla

I hope you're well and safe!

You could have a row added for each email and then maybe use a parser service to parse out the information, but because there isn't a structure to the emails, it will be difficult.

I'd recommend informing everyone that they can't submit emails but must use the form.

What do you think?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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Alla · 06/09/22

Thank you all for your feedback. I was able to achieve the following:

when the email is received, I use Microsoft PowerAutomate to parse it and add a row to excel (I needed essential: sender's name, email subject, body, and time received.
I used data shuttle to map info into Smartsheet.
Then move the row from the email sheet to my ticketing smartsheet to assign tickets and do the rest of the work.
The challenge is ensuring I don't duplicate the ticket from the email sheet. I have converted the date received into a number, so I have a unique key id. Using simple Index/match formula, I can identify if I already have that unique key id in my ticketing system.
The second challenge is what to do with the duplicate. I wish Smartsheet had automation to delete the row. As a workaround, I created a workflow where duplicates will be moved to Garbage/duplicate Sheet. I have created a blank excel sheet with just one row of random info. I have used data shuttle to replace all, so my garbage sheet stays clean.

I will submit an enhancement request. We should be able to automatically capture/match Outlook Fields (not necessarily parsing the body of the email-although it would be nice to have the ability to put keywords in the email that it could look for) into the Smartsheet. My only issue with the workflow above is that I am not able to capture the attachments ☹️

liz.mayeux · 06/14/22

Why not use the Smartsheet for outlook add-in? It would save your email to a new line and you can also include initial information in the primary column to kick off any workflows. Attachments would include the email and its contents as well.

Jeff Lee · 09/12/23

Or use JIRA for tickets. Smartsheet really isn't a good product for this use case, IMO. I'm moving away from it for this purpose.

Purnima Gore_PGPS · 11/30/23

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/332820#Comment_332820

Because they don't have a version for regions. I use the EU region version and there is no option to sign in to that. I did check that, so I am now looking at using tick tick or trello so that I can email to create a task both all things except specific project and capturing information. It is disappointing not to be able to use the outlook add-in or for the ability to add a row by email.

it also needs a better method of creating an app for the rows (the mobile version isn't great) so that I only ever use one product for task and activity management.

Is there a way to capture email as an automatic row record in Smartsheet

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