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WARNING! Template Automation with "Send to specific people" IS BROKEN

Ker9

Warning! On approximately 8/13/26 ALERT automation in TEMPLATES that use "“Send to specific people” no longer works. It will become disabled when the template is used. (It may not break immediately on the first use of the template, but it will break.) You may receive no notification that there is a problem.

Smartsheet has declared that although this has been working for years, it is now intentional that it breaks.

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Comments

Amy.

Has Smartsheet provided any official announcement on this?

Ker9

Not to my knowledge. I find it unacceptable to break something that has been working for years.

Ker9

Going forward, after creating a sheet from Template, open the automations, find the disabled automations, click the 3 dots and select Activate.

Amy.

But how would this work for sheets created through Control Center. It isn't feasible to manually activate automations in every sheet.

Ker9

I can't speak to Control Center functionality as we do not have it. The problem is only in templates, not copies of sheets.

Smartsheet told me to submit a Product Feedback form. Not very helpful.

Andrée Starå

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/148121/warning-template-automation-with-send-to-specific-people-is-broken

Hi,

I hope you're well and safe!

Who at Smartsheet declared it?

This can't be correct (I hope not!) because that goes against everything Smartsheet is trying to do, or at least I'm treating it that way until the Product Owner officially confirms it, or the Help section or something similar is updated with that information.

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic day!

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

✅ Did my comment/answer help? Please support with 💡 ⬆️ ❤️ ✅ so others find it. Thank you! 🙏

Ker9

Hi @Andrée Starå

Below is what I received from support (note that it was working as expected up until approximately 8/13/26).

====

What's happening:This is expected behavior in Smartsheet, not a bug. When a sheet is created from a template (or via "Save as new"), any automation that references an external resource — such as sending to specific people, generating a document from a DocuSign/PDF template, moving/copying rows to another sheet, or posting notifications to a Slack/Teams channel — is automatically marked "Unable to run." Smartsheet does this intentionally, as a safeguard, because the new sheet's creator may not have access to the same target sheets, templates, or contacts that the original workflow was linked to. Rather than letting a broken automation run silently, it pauses the workflow until it's manually re-validated.How to fix it:You have two easy options:

1. Open the affected automation, click Edit, then Save without changing anything this re-validates and reactivates it.

2. Or, simply click the three-dot menu next to the automation and select Activate.

Once reactivated, the automation should run normally going forward on that sheet which you have already pin pointed and would ask you to please follow the same.

======

Andrée Starå

Thanks for the additional information.

I just tested it, and as long as you check the following boxes in the Save As New dialog, it seems to work as it always has.

Doesn't that work in your case, and does it get deactivated?

ScreenFloat Shot of Dia on 2026-09-09 at 13-44-43.jpeg

Ker9

Give it a few minutes - there is a timing issue. The first copy of the template may work, but the next copies will not. Eventually you will get a notification that the automation in the template failed. Sometimes fast, often very slow to catch up.

Annaleah Morrow

Anyone know why this was done, or the rationale??? It makes sense the the sheet creator needs to see certain things for assistance.

Ker9

We check those two boxes, it still disables the automation on "Send to specific people" when the template is used to create a new sheet. (Sometimes it works the first time you use the template, but succeeding uses disable the automation.)

Ker9

I don't understand it - it worked for years.

jfilut

I find this crazy. I lose so much efficiency if my notifications randomly shut down. I'm dependent on these in the day to day work flows. It is already causing problems for me. Can anyone at Smartsheet explain why they would do this? It's a really bad idea that will get a lot of negative press. I will now have to go through 100+ Smartsheets to check how I've been impacted. Fuming.

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