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Automations stopped triggering

Marek Janosik

Hi,

We are using the same automations across countless sheets, and they have been working reliably for years. They are set up correctly, and no changes have been made to them. However, they stopped triggering yesterday.

The automations are very simple and are triggered by cell changes. For example, if we enter "Done" in Column 1, an automation updates Column 2 to "Pending." All of our automations are straightforward like this, and without them, we are losing valuable time.

Note 1: I have noticed on the forum that multiple people are experiencing issues with automations. It seems to be a broader problem, possibly on the Smartsheet side.

Note 2: This happened a couple of months ago as well. We experienced the same issue, although I was not the one who reported it at the time. A colleague from another team submitted the report.

Is there anything you can do to help? Are you already investigating this issue?

Thank you.

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vbyerley

Marek, are your statuses associated with any kind of conditional formatting? What I found was that anytime I would change the statuses on my sheet, the change in conditional formatting was being seen by Smartsheet as a change in the cell value (it isn't obviously) and triggering a bunch of the "change" automations, kicking the status back to something else. When I called Smartsheet support, they said they hadn't gotten any reports of this happening. This sheet and its automations have been working fine for months.

Marek Janosik

Hi, sadly I think we have a different issue. I could have cells without any formatting and automation won't trigger at all. I've created empty sheet with no formatting and had the same issue.

It won't trigger.

When I run the automation manually in Automation menu. It will run, but it will not respect any conditions and changes values in multiple cells instead of one.

BryanG

Hello,

Are the columns that you are referencing free text or dropdowns? I have had issues with automations failing or not running when I use the free text fields.

Marek Janosik

Hello Bryan,

It does not matter. We are using dropdown menu, but it does not trigger even in simple text column.

Marek Janosik

Adding more context
This is the automation in question, one example (the first image). We are using cell changes for multiple columns in our workflow based on status changes made by a specialist. Saves us a lot of clicks.

Until this Monday, automations like these were working just fine. Something had to change on Smartsheet's side, we did not change anything.

I was doing more testing and it seems like the automation is not triggering when one of the conditions is "blank". Specifically if it is selected from a dropdown menu like in first image (is one of). If I remove the condition and simulate with "Error" instead, automation will trigger.

This seems like a bug to me. I can fix this by reworking all our automations to something like this (the second image). But I should not have to :( we have around 10 automations like this per sheet and 100 running sheets right now.

Paul Newcome

@Marek Janosik I agree that this seems to be a bug. I would suggest changing only those that absolutely must be changed for now to save yourself the hassle and reaching out to support.

Marek Janosik

UPDATE:
Ok, so changing them did not help. Even without any condition automation will not trigger or it will after 10+ minutes and not in 100% of cases. I've already reported this to support. This is a huge problem for us and without the automations we are losing a lot of time.

Paul Newcome

@Marek Janosik I have been seeing more and more reports of issues with automations lately. Hopefully Support is able to get it all figured out soon.

I can't seem to find it anymore, but I do remember a few years back seeing some official documentation about automations firing within 15 minutes of the trigger, so I would give it at least that before assuming it didn't fire off.

Marek Janosik

Hi Paul,
yeah, waiting for automation 15 minutes is not good for us. We need them to run in seconds or in one minute max. So I hope someone will respond to my Case and we will figure it out and get it fixed. Again, we were working with fast automations for years.

Monica.Buelna

Hello - We are running into the same issue with out automations. We have an automation to clear a cell value, then move to another sheet. It seems that the clear cell value automation is not being recognized and instead, advancing to the move to another sheet automation. When this occurs, incorrect data is included on the 2nd sheet, as the clear cell value determines what data to pull in.

My workaround has been to add an additional condition to the move to another sheet automation, where the clear cell value must be in place before the move can trigger. This appears to work in the interim, but as another person had commented, we had this setup in place for years without issue.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/518933#Comment_518933

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

I've seen similar reports from other users.

If you haven't already, I recommend submitting a support ticket through the new Smartsheet Support Portal.
The more tickets they receive about similar issues, the quicker they can identify the issue and implement a fix.

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic day!

Andrée Starå | Smartsheet Expert Consultant and Partner / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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