Dear all, I am hoping to get some assistance regarding an intermittent email bot issue that started recently.
Description of Issue:
I have an app that has been running smoothly since 2020. The app allows users to capture photos and once a record is saved, a bot is triggered to generate a PDF report (using Google Docs template) that includes those captured photos. On average, about 30 PDF reports are generated daily, all of which are sent to the app owner’s email inbox. However, since July 2025, the app has started facing intermittent issues with the PDF email reports.
Symptoms Observed:
When a record is saved, the bot is triggered as per usual and according to the audit logs, the process completes successfully. However, no email with the PDF report was received for some of these saves. During periods of low activity, the reports are sent and received normally. But when I perform multiple saves in quick succession (spamming the saves to simulate multiple users saving different records), the reports stop arriving entirely, even though the audit log still shows the bot has run successfully. After a cooling period of about 1–2 hours, if I open the same record and save again without making any changes, the PDF report is generated and successfully sent to the inbox. This behavior repeats consistently and can be replicated across multiple apps.
Testing Conducted:
- This issue is not specific to any particular app, as all my apps with different setups started facing this email issue since July 2025.
- This is not related to any specific row data, as the same record that failed in creating the PDF report earlier will succeed later without any changes, after the cooling period.
- It is not an email account issue as the missing reports are not found in the spam/junk folder and the mailbox is not full.
- I tested using both Google and Microsoft accounts. The issue occurs on both.
- I have verified that no changes have been made to the bot or template setup.
Suspected Cause:
It seems like there might be some kind of rate-limiting or spam detection mechanism introduced (either on AppSheet’s backend or Google’s email system) that temporarily blocks email sending when multiple reports are generated in a short time. However, I could not find any documentation indicating such a restriction or automatic throttling. Is this true and are there any workarounds for this please?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
