Automation workflow for updates that only applies to Subtasks

Travis Oviatt

We are working on a software update project that we would like to automate update reminders to be sent out but we only want it to apply to the subtasks and not to the parent tasks. There was another member of the community with a similar question (https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/84697/how-can-i-set-a-workflow-automation-for-subtasks) but this requires adding addition rows to identify the dates of the parent task vs the sub task, this seems labour intensive for a function that intuitively should be possible without additional administrative effort.

Pam Ferguson

You can create a helper column....I use something like the following, just change the [Parent Row Name] to your column name.

=COUNT(ANCESTORS([Parent Row Name]@row)) + 1

Then you use the automation to run when it's not "1", which would be your parent rows. Try that.

Travis Oviatt

Thanks Pam, I will give it a try. I was hoping that there is a formatting character for the indent that could be used to filter parent vs child lines.