Background- My company creates multiple proposals every month and each proposal requires a proposal number. In the past, researchers had to email the production manager to get a proposal number. Some researchers had “emergencies” and had to get a proposal within minutes (sometimes on weekends), forcing our production manager to frequently put out fires. We automated the process using Microsoft forms to collect the data from researchers, sending the data to an excel spreadsheet which created the next number in a sequence. Since the number has a prefix, then a hyphen, then a suffix, the resulting excel spreadsheet needs a formula to create the next number in a sequence.
We have a zap set up to send out a notification email (MS Outlook) to all the involved parties when a new line is created in the resulting excel spreadsheet.
Problem - the email is not capturing the new proposal number. The test email worked fine when it was sent out (see ZapierCorrectTest.png attached - the number is 921-9801). However, when used in real time, the proposal number does not appear on the email (see ZapierError.png, where there is a zero in the subject line instead of the proposal number. All the rest of the data is captured just fine).
I have tried the following:
- thinking that zapier is pulling the information from the spreadsheet before it can calculate the project number, I put in a delay, which did not work.
- changed the column that zapier pulls the project number from to a column that has a simpler formula (that worked the last time I tried it).
I am thinking, perhaps creating an intermediate step where I send the info to a google sheet, then sending the email based on the google sheet?
Any help greatly appreciated!
