Rich Text Formatting in email notifications (and Update Requests)

Jörg Schmidt1 · 08/08/22

Hi,

unfortunately I heard from Andree that is still not possible to

format text in update requests or email notifications f.e. bold, italic, underlined as well as putting URL-links to certain words or make quotations.

I regret this because I find it a very important function and hope you will agree and find a solution.

Hope to hear from you, soon. Thank you.

kowal · 07/29/22

It would be great to have some kind of Rich Text Formatting Inside Notifications.

I am using the Notifications a lot and sometimes I need to put the link to the Smartsheet Form inside... the link is long and does not look sexy at all.

Would be great to convert text in notifications into links.

SS in CO · 11/17/22

Hyperlink cannot be included in a customized message in the Workflow. I am using Smartsheet to have people register for a simulcast. The workflow includes a message sent to the registrant but I am unable to have hyperlinks to calendar downloads included in the message.

MariaCurtis · 03/24/23

I'm currently building out an "Ideas" page for our HR PMO. When testing, I realized email alerts cannot be formatted. Not even basic formatting like bolding text.

In the example below, I don't want to do much, but the ability to bold the field names would be helpful so the receiver of this email can quickly see what the field is, values they've submitted, and responses received on their idea.

I think it would be great to include the option to:

Bold Text
Underline Text
Italicize Text
Create Bulleted List
Create Numbered List
Change Font Color

Ken Armstrong · 04/13/23

It seems conditional formatting does not show in automated alerts and emails. I would be fantastic if this could be considered.

Mike matthys · 04/28/23

And the width of the notification would be nice to, now i got a email page thats is 80% white and 20 % notification

Would be nice to have it a little wider, like times 2 :) or a setting that you can change

Joerg Schmidt · 05/04/23

Hi, I would appreciate if it is possible to mark email text in bold, underline or italic

Thank you

Alex77 · 05/11/23

I agree. A few years back I believe that conditional formatting did translate over to automated alerts and emails. Seems like it doesn't anymore, which is frustrating. I agree that this would be helpful to have again.

amhba · 06/04/23

Here is a workaround, at least for bold text: Use https://boldtext.io/ to convert plain text into Unicode. Type in what you want to convert in the top part, then copy the converted text from the bottom part, and use those unicode-converted values to identify columns in email alerts that are otherwise plain text.

Examples: 𝗕𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁, 𝙄𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙘 𝘽𝙤𝙡𝙙

These are not formatted text, they are actually different characters altogether; if you copy-paste those into your sheet or alert, you should see them come through as looking like formatted text.

To provide field names in notifications, we use an "aggregator" column to group multiple columns into a single field, so you simply reference the Aggregator column instead of maintaining formatted column names in each notification (assuming you have more than one that goes out to people).

Assuming that your column names are Idea Title, Description, Status, Comments from PMO, and Submission date, the Status Aggregator column (column formula) would look like this: =("𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗧𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲: " + [Idea Title]@row + CHAR(10) + "𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: " + [Description]@row + CHAR(10) + "𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀: " + [Status]@row + CHAR(10) + "𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗣𝗠𝗢: " + [Comments from PMO]@row + CHAR(10) + "𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: " + [Submission Date]@row + CHAR(10))

So your message would look something like this:

"Hi [Name],

Thank you for sharing your idea with us, the status of your request is below:

{{Status Aggregator}}"

That way you can maintain message contents in a single field without needing to go to your Automations if you want to make changes to the columns that are being presented to people.

You can, of course maintain those individually, so if you wanted to do that you would just put this in your notification messages:

𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗧𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲: {{Idea Title}}

𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: {{Description}}

...etc.

You could run into issues if you have people using email clients that do not support Unicode; as unlikely as that may be nowadays, if that is an issue, people could just see rectangles or blank spaces instead of letters for the "formatted" text.

Pam Ferguson · 06/12/23

It would be great to easily add a weblink in an automatic notification, without having to enter a long web address. Sometimes based on items that are entered, we must redirect users to another site, or one outside of Smartsheet (gasp, I know...), but it would be great to have a cleaner way to enter it.

A.J. · 07/10/23

Currently, there is no way to bold or italicize in the email messages that go out as part of automations. Having the ability to change text color, highlight, and bold would be incredibly helpful for user adoption and to distinguish SmartSheet from competitors.

J.Naylor · 08/07/23

I fully support this feature request! I'm also interested in the ability to format text within the message fields and provide links without seeing he long web address.

I recently encountered this scenario when I created a workflow as part of an event registration process. On the specified date, the workflow will send an update request to prompt the user to visit a website (lunch menu) to choose what they want to eat and then return to the update request form to submit their lunch request.

In the update request message field, I place the link on its own line. Outlook (and some other email services) may automatically create the hyperlink.

However, the the actual web form does not indicate that the text should be a link. I imagine that some recipients may skip the step to click the link in the email, but the web form doesn't indicate that the text is a link (though the user can copy link, paste into browser).

Mary Harper · 10/23/23

I would like to be able to customize the emails that go our from alerts or automation set up i.e. font, bullets

Mike Dufour · 10/24/23

I like this request and would add that it would also be helpful to have an option, to not only be able to specify the sheet columns that you designate in the Alert, but also have a way of indicating to include any columns that have changed. I have a sheet with 40-50 columns and I don't need all columns in the alert. I do need some, but also want to see the columns that changed that I don't designate as default in the alert.

swilliams · 11/22/23

Please add rich text formatting to automation emails. Ideally, allowing images, but even just plain formatting would be nice because we're forced to export as .csv and then use mail merge. Word has just terrible problems with sending dynamic hyperlinks, and Smartsheet is great for that, but we're stuck using the bad solution that works instead of the potentially great solution that doesn't because we can't bulletize lists, include formatted signatures, etc...

Thanks!

NickStaffordPM · 11/23/23

This would be a great improvement. The ability to call out and organize how information is displayed within the text of message would improve UI for us.

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Rich Text Formatting in email notifications (and Update Requests)

On Wishlist · Last Updated 07/11/23

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