Custom field to add watchers and email notification

[Julian Governale]

Im working on an automation rule to send an email to watchers added to a ticket.  We are using a custom multi-user field called "additional participants".

When a user adds someone to this custom field, we then add them to the watchers and the goal is to send an email only to the newly added users, not all the watchers.  After the user has been added, we clear the additional participant's field.. We do this because the team only adds users on a one-off basis, but this is not my favorite or a valid solution for other teams so I want to do a true compare and find the difference between the two fields and only send an email to users that are not watchers currently. 

Here is my current modified automation rule, but looking for experts' opinions to help on the best way to compare the two fields, find the difference between additional participants and the watcher, set the account ID's  that are not watchers in a variable, and use that in my TO address in my email.

The below automation rule works 50% of the time, but if user a (currently a watcher) and user b (currently not a watcher) are both added to the additional participant's field, the email won't send because "user a" is already a watcher. 

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Hi @Julian Governale 

What about:

adding a 2nd custom field in which the rule adds those users that are not already watchers (maybe "Not Yet Watchers"). Then sends email to "Not Yet Watchers". Finally flush both "Not Yet Watchers" and "Additional Watchers".

?

HTH,
KGM

[Julian Governale]

Hi @Kristján Geir Mathiesen ,

I like the idea, but i think this still may cause a similar issue where if an associate is already a watcher, but then added to the not yet watcher field, they would get the email, potentially multiple times if they get added multiple times to the new field.  Let me know if what you are thinking is different than how im thinking it may work. 

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Yeah, ok @Julian Governale if the user was added as a watcher BEFORE (not in the current iteration) then yes, I see what you mean. I don't know but is there no way for you to compare the value of current "Additional Watchers" with current actual Watchers?

HTH,
KGM

[Julian Governale]

Just an update if anyone else finds this post.  We did change and go with a single-user selection list which allowed us to check the single account ID against the Watcher listing.  This is working much better, but I'm going to keep trying to get the multi-user field to work in the same fashion for efficiency's sake and notification's sake. Its much faster to add multi users at once and only trigger one update notification. 

[Fun Man Andy]

@Kristján Geir Mathiesen - isn’t there a way to add a rule about comparing on a user id level… and funnel out that way??

an IF within an IF

(been years since I’ve done automation and don’t want to start giving bum advice. You’re more expert than me 😜)

[Julian Governale]

I just reviewed and didn't see the ability to do an IF in an IF but looking through everything, i actually may be able to use advanced branching to achieve this. I should have some time this weekend to do a test.