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The Copy Row Automation Has Gone Mad Since Oct 7

Hao Wu

I have an automation that copies rows from my Intake sheet to another sheet whenever a new record is submitted through a Smartsheet Form.

The workflow is very simple:

Trigger: When rows are changed
Field: Customer PN
Changes to: Any Value
Action: Copy Row

This automation has been running reliably for about four months without any issues.

However, starting around the evening of October 7 (UTC+8), the workflow began behaving unexpectedly. A single row change now causes the automation to execute multiple times, creating duplicate records in the destination sheet.

In some cases, the same row is copied several times, with each execution occurring roughly 10 minutes apart.

To investigate, I checked the cell history through the Smartsheet API. The triggering cell shows only one value change event, which means the workflow should have run only once. I have not found any corresponding data changes, API updates, or user actions that would explain why the automation is being triggered repeatedly.

I've also noticed that other users appear to be experiencing similar automation issues:

Reddit discussion:Smartsheet Automation Duplicate Trigger Issue
Replies under this Community post:
https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/148457/automation-not-automating

Has anyone else seen similar behavior starting around October 7-8?

If you are experiencing the same issue, please leave a comment with:

Workflow type
Trigger condition
Approximate start date/time of the issue
Whether duplicate executions are occurring

I've already submitted a support ticket to Smartsheet and requested that Engineering investigate potential backend or automation-engine changes.

Hopefully this can be identified and resolved quickly.

Thanks!

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Automations

Comments

David Oski

@Hao Wu The same issue was just brought to my attention this morning. The subject of your post captures the problem perfectly… the Copy Row Automation Has Gone MAD!!!

We have a copy row automation that is trigged by a Record Date automation to submit contract requests. From what I can tell, starting as early as 10/7, the triggered rows have been copied up to 6 additional times without any changes that would cause the automation to retrigger at seemingly random intervals.

We have several solutions in place with similar functionality, and I haven't dug into those just yet to see how widespread the issue is, but I was glad to see that it wasn't just my organization experiencing the problem…

Really hoping SMAR can get these automation glitches under control…

Paul Newcome

There have been a number of issues with automations these past few months. I would suggest reaching out to Support.

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