We are a construction company and I am trying to build automations and a dashboard for tracking "Outstanding Update Requests"
- Each of our Line-Item tasks require us to acquire information from 3rd parties. This information takes standard forms (Start Date, End Date, Comments, Attachments, etc), but the specific fields that we desire an update for will vary from UR to UR.
e.g. Sometimes we need only Comments from Party A, sometimes we need Comments & Start Date update from Party B, sometimes we only need Attachments from Party C
- Sometimes the 3rd parties are internal (i.e. Smartsheet users). Sometimes they are not (i.e. Email contact only).
- Sometimes the project manager will need to edit/modify the line-item while they are waiting for a response from a 3rd party
We are trying to track and manage outstanding communications with 3rd parties. For each line-item, we are trying to track the following critical information:
A) When did we last reach out?
B) To Whom?
C) Did they respond?
D) What was their response? (Less important)
If we can track the information above, I can build reports and dashboard widgets to answer "How many days have we gone without a response from {{UR Recipient}} on {{Task}}??
I'm trying to build tracking automation into our workflows.
Key Problems:
1. Update Requests that are sent manually seem to be a black box. I can't scrape any "Exit data" (e.g. Who, When, etc.) into the line-item when sending a UR manually, nor can we create automation using it as a trigger.
2. When sending a UR via automations instead, you are heavily limited in the ability to customize which fields are being sent as part of thee UR.
- Workarounds for this solution usually include automations that "trigger sending a UR to {{UR Recipient}} when {{Send UR Checkbox}} is ticked." However, when automating this, we basically need to to pre-select and hardcode what fields are being sent. This isn't good for us.
- At this point the only option I see to be able to send "more custom" UR's via automation is to define a whole ton of UR "automation-sending" workflows, one for each possible format of the UR. Are there any other options??
3. Tracking multiple or repeat requests to the same party on the same line-item. Any data ("who"," when") about a new outbound UR request will presumeably overwrite the old data. Problem - If we're trying to track how long it's been since a 3rd party got our request, we don't want this ever resetting to zero when a new/reminder request is sent.
These are our struggles. Does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing something obvious??
It shocks me that the Update Request log is such a black box. We can see the data, but cannot access it unless via API.
At this stage, I'm looking into API-based solutions to fully export the Update Request data as .csv and then re-import the data into a smartsheet to then pull into a Dashboard via a report. If anyone's consulting company can do this, I'm interested to hear what they think it would take to build and maintain.
Cross Iron
