USM Content
Automated alerts and reminders ensure that the right people get the right information, at the right time.
-
Alerts are reactively triggered by changes to your sheet, and notify stakeholders of updates to critical information.
-
Reminders are proactively triggered by a specific date or time and keep task owners apprised of key deadlines.
Both alerts and reminders can be set up individually or together as part of a larger workflow with multiple conditions. They can also be sent to multiple recipients on a recurring basis, even if the recipient is not shared to your sheet.
Trigger blocks: When your workflow is executed
USM Content
When creating automation workflows, you can select from the following triggers:
- When rows are added or changed
- When rows are changed
- When rows are added (this doesn't trigger for changes in existing rows)
- When a date is reached
Enter your criteria for the workflow trigger next to When to ensure that only the desired changes in the fields you choose trigger the workflow. For example, you can create a workflow that triggers when an item's status changes to Complete.
Brandfolder Image
Users with Editor-level permissions can only create, edit, or delete alerts or reminders with themselves as the recipient.
Learn about workflow permissions.
To prevent infinite loops, Smartsheet doesn’t trigger actions that change the sheet automatically by inbound cell-links or cross-sheet formulas. This includes formulas that refer to another cell using an inbound cell link or a cross-sheet formula.
For example, if the Status cell on the row is populated by a formula pointing to a cell with a cell link from another sheet, changes to that cell value through the cell link don’t trigger a workflow that locks the row when Status changes to Complete.
To work around this, consider using time-based automations or recurrence workflows.
Workflows frequency
The workflow frequency you can set depends on the trigger you select.
Hourly, Daily, and Monthly are only available for the following triggers:
- When rows are added or changed
- When rows are changed
- When rows are added
| Workflow frequency | Hourly | Daily | Weekly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run workflow and change sheet | Hourly after the initial trigger criteria and workflow conditions are met. | 12:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. | Between 12:00 a.m. on Friday of the current week and 11:59 p.m. on Thursday of the following week. |
| Alert messages | Hourly after the initial trigger. | Between 12:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. the day after the workflow runs. | Between 12:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. on Friday of the following week. |
This is an example of how a Weekly workflow works:
You created a weekly workflow on March 16, 2022 (Wednesday). It runs and evaluates sheet changes from March 18, 2022 (Friday) to March 24, 2022 (Thursday). After going through the sheet changes, it delivers the alert message about the sheet changes on March 25, 2022 (Friday).
To set up this frequency of your workflow
- In the Trigger block, set the Trigger to any of these options:
- When rows are added or changed
- When rows are added
- When rows are changed
- Select any of these Run workflow options:
- Hourly
- Daily
- Weekly
If you use automated workflows to send notifications and want to use {{Placeholders}}, your workflow can only send notifications When triggered. Hourly, Daily or Weekly options aren't available in this scenario.
Recurrent workflows
The When a date is reached trigger can have a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly recurrence.
This trigger requires you to set the hour at which your workflow should trigger, regardless of the chosen recurrence. This is done in the trigger block, not in the Custom recurrence window. Consider the time zone that appears below the trigger hour.
The table below explains the behavior for each recurrence option.
| Day | Week | Month | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triggers every day. | Triggers the days you selected, every week. | This triggers the workflow once a month. You have two options to set this up:
| The workflow triggers once per year, in the selected hour, day, and month. |
Set your trigger to occur an hour before the action should occur. This ensures that technical issues don't prevent the action from happening on time.
- In the Trigger block of your workflow, select When a date is reached.
- Select Run once > Custom.
- In the Custom Recurrence window, select the desired cadence for your workflows to trigger.
- Select when the workflow Starts and Ends.
- Select Done.
You can configure your workflow to end after a specific date or a certain number of executions.
That’s it! Your workflow now executes at the specified recurrence. To control which rows your workflow includes when it runs, take a look at Condition blocks.
Keep the following in mind
- You can only batch workflows to run Hourly, Daily, or Weekly for Notifications and Update and approval requests action types without If approved or If declined actions.
- Workflow triggers by changes to Any Value include when a cell becomes blank.
- When you or other sheet collaborators save changes to multiple sheet rows within the workflow frequency, all users subscribed to the workflow receive a single notification with up to 100 rows in grid format.
- If your workflow is set to Hourly, Daily, or Weekly, you can't use any of these action types:
- Clear cell value
- Assign people
- Record a date
- Move rows
- Copy rows
- Lock rows
- Unlock rows
- Request an approval
- Save the workflow with the When triggered setting
- Return to editing the workflow
Regarding time-based workflow:
- When you manually select a date, the workflow triggers all the rows that meet the conditions you set simultaneously. For example, you can use an alert to remind you to take action on all rows that don't have an Assignee by a specific date.
- When you select a date field for the workflow, the sheet checks daily for rows to include. If no rows satisfy the workflow’s conditions, there's no trigger.
- You can't include rows that don't have a date.
- You can also refine the hour of the day for your workflow to run.
- The trigger’s time zone is always the same as the sheet Owner's time zone.
- Automation doesn't send messages when the sheet is empty.