Update Requests: Search by recipient and unplanned reminders

Adam Shipway

I am using update requests quite a lot, but they are not for recurrent type activities. I would like to think they would be recieved and acted on, so I don't set up reminders.

 

My problem is that recipients are working across many production jobs, and not reporting activity consistently, using the Update Request system. This is partly due to slackness, and partly due to it being difficult to see all the Requests that are accumulating.

 

My desire is:

1.  That each user should have all the active Update Request they recieve added to their to Smartsheet "My To Do List". These would automatically remove themselves when the update is done.

1. 2. That the emailed Update Request should optionally take the form of a task, that would go on thier email client task list (eg Outlook), if that is what they prefer to work with.

3. That I can search ALL Workspaces and Sheets  for ALL active Update Requests for a particular Recipient. Then I would like to be able to send Update Request reminders to that Recipient either individually, by multi-select, or select All.

4. It would be useful to track response times for Update Requests, and to see the history of Update Requests on a per row basis. This might form a quantifiable KPI.

5. Finally, it would be useful to more easily see the details of changes made, and how long they took... This could be in the details presented when examining a completed request, or hotlinked to the relevant cells.

Travis

Hi Adam, those are some great suggestions and I will pass them along to our product team. I have a couple of thoughts though...

 

Have you tried using reports, rather than update request? Each user could have their own report that pulls in tasks from a single sheet or all sheets that are assigned to them and open. This is live data, they can make their changes in the report and it would be reflected in the sheets. Once a task is marked as complete, it is removed from the report.

 

(regarding #3) You could build a report that pulls in all the open tasks from all your users or filter by a user or status. This would be a live report which is updated as the sheets are updated.

 

Reports can be set to send to a user on a recurring basis. You could set up a report for User A that emails them all their open tasks every Monday at 8am. 

 

(regarding #2) It is possible to publish a calendar to Outlook using iCal the an ICS file. Info on that here: http://help.smartsheet.com/customer/portal/articles/775707-publishing-a-smartsheet-calendar-to-ical