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 @FuWaye

As mentioned earlier, I had assumed you would only have one right answer per row. I also thought you meant multiple rows would fire off at the same time, thus sending multiple emails at a time.

A Workflow with Conditional Paths is like an IF statement in that the FIRST true statement encountered is the pathway followed. A longer discussion is here. The linked discussion is querying exactly what you are trying to do - unfortunately that earlier post confirms only one path is followed at a time. The post suggests a Report.

Kelly

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

FuWaye

@Kelly Moore @Amber Eakin Hi! I have a similiar question, though my issue is slightly different, I need to send one notifification to the same contact person but with different customized messages based on the checklist items selected. IS that feasible? Thanks!

Kelly Moore

Hey @FuWaye

Yes, you can do as described using Conditional Paths in your automation. In my example below, my choices are in a single drop-down column. This doesn't have to be the case but for simplicity, it is the example.

Note I did not call out a specific Choice in my trigger as I want the automation to trigger whenever there is some change in my dropdown column. I must manually select Any Value.

One Condition box is automatically added. To add more, click the Blue icons. In this case, choose the icon under your Trigger box.

Again, I didn't have to use the same column for my choices. I could have chosen different columns for each path, depending upon my sheet structure. You can see in my example I also used Alert someone in each path. I also could have chosen a different Action, if desired.

Finally, my messages. In this example I chose 'Message Only'.

Please shout out if you have any questions on this.

Kelly

FuWaye

Hi @Kelly Moore , thanks for the detail instruction, however, this will still send out more than one email to the same person if more than one Condistion Path met, correct? I need to send the customized messages based on the Conditions, but all in one email.

Kelly Moore

Hey @FuWaye

I had assumed there would be only one 'right' answer per row. Is this not correct?

FuWaye

@Kelly Moore Multiple conditions could meet, and in that case, I need to send out only one message that includes the relavent contents.

Kelly Moore

@FuWaye

If you're wanting to limit the number of emails sent to individuals, change the trigger Run Workflow from 'when triggered' to Hourly. This should group emails to the same individual in hourly bundles

Kelly

FuWaye

@Kelly Moore I am not sure what is happening here. First of all, I set up a test using the Condition Path, it only sent out one email for the first Condition Path, though my test record meets all 3 Condition Path. When I used the trigger to Hourly, it did the exact same: one email with the content message that goes with the first condition path only, not all 3. What am I missing?

Kelly Moore

Hey @FuWaye

As mentioned earlier, I had assumed you would only have one right answer per row. I also thought you meant multiple rows would fire off at the same time, thus sending multiple emails at a time.

A Workflow with Conditional Paths is like an IF statement in that the FIRST true statement encountered is the pathway followed. A longer discussion is here. The linked discussion is querying exactly what you are trying to do - unfortunately that earlier post confirms only one path is followed at a time. The post suggests a Report.

Kelly

FuWaye

Hi @Kelly Moore Thanks so much for the link to the "longer discussion"..that is very helpful and exactly what I am trying to do:-) Cheers!