Smartsheet intake triage: auto-score and route new requests

PromptCreate

Every 30 minutes between 8am and 6pm on weekdays, triage the new intake requests piling up in my Smartsheet request sheet.

Start by pulling the request sheet with the Smartsheet Get Sheet operation, or use Search in Sheet, and find every row where the Triage Status column is still empty. Those are the untriaged requests. Skip any row that already has a triage status so nothing gets scored twice.

For each untriaged row, read the free-text request description and decide four things: the work type, a priority from P1 to P4, a rough effort estimate, and the right owning team. Use the request's stated deadline and its business impact as the main signals. A hard external deadline, blocked revenue, or a customer-facing outage pushes the priority up; a nice-to-have ask with no date and no stated impact sits near the bottom.

Write those judgements back into the row with Smartsheet Update Rows, filling the work type, priority, effort estimate and owning team columns, and setting Triage Status so the row is not picked up on the next run.

Then use Create Discussion on Row to leave a short comment, two or three sentences, explaining the reasoning behind the call and naming the deadline and impact signals it was based on. This comment is the audit trail: a human should be able to read it, see why the request was scored the way it was, and override the call if they disagree.

Anything scored P1 should also be posted to my operations Slack channel using the Slack Send a Message operation. Include the requester, a one-line summary of the ask, the deadline, the owning team and a link back to the row, so it gets picked up the same day rather than waiting for someone to notice it in the sheet.

If a request is too vague to score, do not guess. Set its Triage Status to "Needs Info" instead of assigning a priority, and leave a comment on the row saying exactly what is missing, for example the deadline, the business impact, or which system or customer it affects.

If there are no untriaged rows when the workflow runs, do nothing and finish quietly. Do not post to Slack when there is nothing new to report.

What does this prompt do?

Checks your request sheet every 30 minutes during working hours and finds the rows that have not been triaged yet.
Reads each free-text request description and assigns a work type, a priority from P1 to P4, a rough effort estimate and the owning team, judged mainly on the stated deadline and business impact.
Fills the decision into the row and adds a short comment explaining the reasoning, so a human can audit or override any call. Requests that are too vague get marked Needs Info instead of a guessed score.
Posts every P1 to your operations Slack channel so the urgent work gets picked up the same day.

What do I need to use this?

A Smartsheet login with edit access to the sheet your requests land in
An intake sheet with a free-text request description plus columns for triage status, work type, priority, effort and owning team
A Slack workspace and the channel your operations team watches for urgent work

How can I customize it?

Change the schedule: run it every 15 minutes, hourly, or only at the start and end of each day.
Rename the priority scale, work types or team names so they match the dropdown options already on your sheet.
Decide what gets escalated: send P2s to Slack as well, or point different owning teams at different channels.

FAQs

What happens to requests that are too vague to score?

They are marked Needs Info rather than given a guessed priority. The comment on the row spells out what is missing, such as a deadline, the business impact, or which system is affected, so whoever follows up knows exactly what to ask for.

Can I override a priority I disagree with?

Yes. Everything is written into normal cells on your sheet, so you can edit any of it by hand. The comment left on each row explains the reasoning behind the call, which makes it quick to see whether you agree before you change anything.

Will the same request get triaged twice?

No. Only rows with an empty triage status are picked up, and the status is filled in as part of the update, so once a request has been scored it is skipped on every later run.

Why not just use Smartsheet's built-in automation?

Smartsheet rules can route a row based on fixed values already sitting in cells, but they cannot read a paragraph of free text and work out how urgent it is. That judgement step is the gap this fills, and the result is written straight back into the sheet you already use.

Do the priority levels have to be P1 to P4?

No. P1 to P4 is just the default. If your team uses High, Medium and Low, or a numeric score, say so when you set it up and the same logic applies to your scale.

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