Can Smartsheet Send Automated Emails Easily 2026

From an active sheet, like the project schedule Gantt view shown here, click Automation in the top menu bar next to File and Forms. This opens the entry point to Smartsheet's workflow builder, where every automated action for that sheet gets created and managed. Automation lives at the sheet level, so each sheet has its own independent set of workflows.

The Automation Template Gallery lists pre-built options grouped by purpose, and "Alert someone when specified criteria are met" is one of the most useful starting points for email reminders. The template preview explains what it's good for, like notifying stakeholders about at-risk statuses or alerting teammates when a task's phase changes, and spells out the three pieces you'll configure: a trigger, optional conditions, and an action. Clicking Use Template drops a working skeleton into the builder that you then customize rather than assembling one from an empty canvas.

In the workflow builder, the Trigger block defaults to "When rows are changed," watching any field for changes and running the workflow as soon as one is detected. Below it, the Alert someone action lets you send to specific people by typing a name or email, or route the message to everyone shared to the sheet. A Customize message link and a note confirming the email will be sent from Smartsheet Automation round out the action block, and a small plus button below lets you chain additional steps onto the same workflow.

A workflow that fires on any field change will get noisy fast, so change the trigger's When condition to something specific, such as % Complete changes to 100%. That turns a generic "something happened" alert into a targeted one that only fires when a task actually finishes, which is exactly the kind of signal a project manager wants in their inbox instead of a flood of minor edits. You can click "Specify another change" to stack multiple conditions on the same trigger if you need it even more precise.

Open Customize message to pull dynamic row data, like Task Name or Status, directly into the email's subject or body instead of sending a generic notification. This is what makes the alert actually useful to the recipient, since they see which task changed and what its new state is without having to open the sheet first.

Before turning the workflow on, check whether it should be restricted to people already shared to the sheet or opened up to external stakeholders, since that setting controls who's even eligible to receive the alert. Once it looks right, save the workflow and make a live test change, like flipping a task's % Complete to 100%, to confirm the email actually arrives the way you configured it before relying on it for real deadlines.