Approval Workflow: Triggered even though condition is NOT met

crittcg · 11/04/22

Workflows: Two different approval workflows currently, see below.

Event: When a project is moving from Discovery into Evaluation, an approval is sent requested. If it is Declined, BOTH of the declined branch notifications (the "request for update" in each screen shot below) are triggering, resulting in the PM receiving two emails. This is despite having a primary condition that Stage = Planning for the first one.

Thoughts?

I can, however, prevent this by adding yet another condition to each side of the approval branch, Stage=Planning (again...), but I want to understand why it's happening when in my view it shouldn't be. But I'm also new at this, so I am probably missing something.

Paul Newcome · 11/04/22

The way you can read branches of an automation like this is as if they are their own separate automations.

So that second portion reads as "When [Most Recent Approval] changes to "Approved"". It reads the same way in both automations. Even though they are branched out from the same automation workflow, they have their own separate triggers. The branching just helps with organization of your workflows.

crittcg · 11/04/22

My solution is to have this, but again this seems like it shouldn't be necessary.

Christian G. · 11/04/22

@crittcg Thanks for charing your workaround solution.

Paul Newcome · 11/04/22

The way you can read branches of an automation like this is as if they are their own separate automations.

So that second portion reads as "When [Most Recent Approval] changes to "Approved"". It reads the same way in both automations. Even though they are branched out from the same automation workflow, they have their own separate triggers. The branching just helps with organization of your workflows.

crittcg · 11/04/22

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/349982#Comment_349982

That seems like a glaringly obvious bug to me, but your explanation helps me understand what’s going on.

So the check for approved/declined within the Request for Approval acts as its own separate Workflow, regardless of whatever trigger conditions preceded it (in this case, when Stage changes to Planning). Seems like something they could fix easily by adding logic within the Approval automation checking the previous condition prior to every action. IE, Trigger=True? Send approval. Receive response, Trigger=True? Save in ____. Response Approved, Trigger=True? Alert Someone. Response Declined, Trigger=True? Request an Update.

Thanks for the comment and help. This actually explains a lot of issues I’ve been having with the Smartsheet processes being triggered by seemingly random events. *face palm*

Paul Newcome · 11/07/22

Happy to help. 👍️

smrtsht_user85 · 02/14/24

I'm running into this too and I'm very surprised this not being treated as a bug. The recipients are receiving two emails when the automations are structured this way.

Paul Newcome · 02/14/24

@smrtsht_user85 It isn't being treated as a bug because it is expected functionality. While it may not always be the most user friendly or intuitive, it was designed to operate this way.

smrtsht_user85 · 02/15/24

Expected functionality for the developers maybe but not for the end users. It was certainly unexpected for me and the original poster. I'm very sure there will be cases where people are going to be blindsided by this because it is extremely unintuitive that trigger conditions get ignored for a very opaque reason.

Approval Workflow: Triggered even though condition is NOT met

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