Notifying someone they were assigned multiple new tasks without sending a notification for each Task

Daniel Thacker

I have a task tracker sheet and regularly enter multiple tasks that are assigned to a single person. What is the best way for me to notify them of the new tasks without having a new notification sent for each individual task? Thanks in advance.

Amber Eakin

Hello @Daniel Thacker - Yes, they would receive a notification for all tasks assigned to them in that hour. I would set it up for the Trigger to be "when rows are added or changed," When "Assigned to" changes, and Run workflow hourly. That way, they're only getting the notification when it's assigned to them.

And yes, this can work for Update Requests. However, if they don't need to submit an Update when they first receive a task, this might be confusing. If they do need to respond immediately, this should work!

Kelly Moore

Hey @Daniel Thacker

One easy way to regulate notifications is to change the Run Workflow setting from 'When Triggered' to some other interval. The notifications are collected until the time, then one email will be sent for all the notifications (for that recipient) that happened in that time window.

The reference below will clarify what these times translate to.

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2479291-trigger-frequent-change-based-automations-in-batches

Will this work for you?

Kelly

Daniel Thacker

Hi Kelly. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll need a little more explanation for me to understand. If I set the workflow to run hourly, and the trigger is when assigned to changes to any value, and the action is to send an alert to the person in the assigned to field, they will receive a notification every hour for all tasks that were assigned to them within that hour? How would smartsheet know if it is a new task or an outstanding task?

I read the article you sent, but didn't quite understand the part about update requests either. Can this be used with update requests? I much prefer them since I can allow the user to provide input via "Open request" whether they have an account or not.

Thank you for your help. Apologies if this is confusing.

Amber Eakin

Hello @Daniel Thacker - Yes, they would receive a notification for all tasks assigned to them in that hour. I would set it up for the Trigger to be "when rows are added or changed," When "Assigned to" changes, and Run workflow hourly. That way, they're only getting the notification when it's assigned to them.

And yes, this can work for Update Requests. However, if they don't need to submit an Update when they first receive a task, this might be confusing. If they do need to respond immediately, this should work!

Daniel Thacker

Thank you both very much.

jswaney

Hi ~ Very helpful. I am trying to do this same thing and have the workflow setup like the screenshot above. But when I save I get an error message that Hourly is not allowed. Wondering if others encountered this too?

Genevieve P.

Hi @jswaney

There are some action blocks that can't be used with "hourly" or "weekly" etc. Here's the Help Article that goes through this:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2479291-trigger-frequent-change-based-automations-in-batches

Are you using you workflow to take one of these actions?

Cheers,

Genevieve