Recurring Update Requests

Chuck Muirhead

If I send a weekly update request to my clients on tasks that need to be completed one time, will the update request go away, or will it still send another request in a week even though the client updated the information the first time the request went out?

 

For example, we need out clients to provide certain information one time a year and they are not always good about submitting the information timely.  We already use the "send Now" option, but I would like to set a weekly request, but have the request end if the information has been updated. 

 

I am afraid if I set up a weekly request and they answer it this week, they will receive another request next week if I don't manage it correctly.

 

 

Brett Evans

Check out this answer...

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/automatically-send-web-form-daily

 

you would change step 3 to something like:

=IF(IsBlank(ClientResponse), TODAY(1), "")

 

Chuck Muirhead

Thanks Brett....Not what I was looking for though.  I would like the recurring "Update Request" to send weekly (which it already does), but I would like the request to be completed, if the request is answered/updated.  In the perfect world you send one request and you get an answer/update.  But what about those who do not answer/update timely.  I do not want to think about having to send another "Update Request" (which I don't becasue there is a function for sending weekly) and I don't want to think about deleting a weekly "Update Request" once it has been answered/updated.  Basically, I want to SmartSheet to send the "Update Request" weekly until answered/updated by the client and then end.  I think the way it is now, it will continue sending the "Update Request" weekly even if it has been answered/updated.....correct me if I am wrong.

Eric Browne

You are correct - the weekly update request will be sent on the recurring schedule, whether the previous one was filled out or not.   We've had a similar request for a recurring reminder that's sent until the date is reached.  We'll add your request to our list of enhancements for Update Requests.  Thank you for the feedback!

Brett Evans

Chuck it is complex but you can do it with the current forumla set.  Look at the formula in this thread:

   https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/calculate-xth-weekday-any-month

 

 Specifically:

DAYOFWEEK =

Finding the first day of the month is easy date(year,month,1). Now you need to find out which day of the week it is. To do this do a NETDAYS(firstdate,date(1900,1,1)) -(7*int(NETDAYS(firstdate,date(1900,1,1)) /7)) Friday is 5, So Monday is 1. 

 

After you have found what day of the week it is you can send your reminder every week.   

 

Your date field the Monday reminder gets sent on would look something like this for row 12:

=if(AND(IsBlank(ClientComments12), DAYOFWEEK12 = 1), Today(),"")

 

I had to test this to make sure, It looks like this:

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=c01bd1f796284ac09050f06478614abb  and the reminder should look like this:

You can modify the Day to Send and the ClientComments to get the Send Date field to populate.  This will cause a reminder to be sent one day a week, only when the client comments is blank. 

 

Eric you could accomplish the similar request you describe as well.

 

Feel free to leave change in the tip jar,

Brett

Dennis Decot

This is a great idea as we use smartsheet from an IT Help desk perspective and currenlty I have to monitor all unaswered update requests and have to manually send another update request to the user.  I would like smartsheet to send a new update request X # of days after the original request only if the original request was unaswered.  It would also be nice to have smartsheet send the original sender (myself in this case) a daily email of all the "reminder" update requests that were sent.  This would reduce the amount of time I spend daily reviewing the update requests and who I should follow up with. 

Brett Evans

Dennis-

the example I published sends a reminder once a week on a day you can choose.  You could add the system column modified date and change the formula in the SendDate column to Add X days to modifieddate.  you could even modify to IF( ModifiedDate + X and ClientComment is blank senddate = today , IF( X+3 days, send date = today,( IF (X+5 days,send date = today,"")) ).

 

To get a reminder for yourself you could create a set of reports based on modifieddate and X days and see who hasn't updated their rows in X days, X + 5 days or what ever interval you choose.

Dennis Decot

Brett,

Thank You for your feedback.  This may work but many times there could be a few discussions already in the specefic example and the formula would be based off if the ticket is completed or not.  Would that be possible? Also, I would assume I would have to manually tell smartsheet what day of the week to send off the reminder. I was looking for something more along the lines of "if ticket has been open X number of days, auto send reminder to requestor with all information from the ticket".  I know we can customize the fields sent in the request but again that is manual and we can't set up a template as of yet. I did see another ticket open for that item. Possibly this wont work that well for us at this point but thought I would toss out the above example and see what you thought. 

Brad Jones

+1 vote for "Nag periodically until completed" Update Requests. - FEATURE REQUEST

 

Like Denis, we need the user to update a field that may already have a value in it, or multiple fields and comments.  Also, multiple users may be editing those cells between the beginning and end of the task.

It would be best if the recurring UR was a built in feature, but I bet you could use that technique above and add a check to the modified_by parameter, inserting the name of the person into the formula.  It's not as conveniently traceable as in the standard UR list, but it could get you by for now.

 

Heck, for now I'd be happy if there was even a feature to simply re-send the UR from the interface.

Brad Jones

Bump bump bump.

 

Where is this feature????  UR are so powerful, but they're only good if your entire team is rigidly filling them out in a timely manner - and that's just not reality anywhere.

 

Add on to that, how about adding the UR completed date into the UR window so that you can see when the UR was closed?

Brad Jones

BUMP BUMP BUMP.

Update Requests are super cool, if EVERYONE on the team remembers to complete them perfectly every time.  If however you live in reality like the rest of us, this just does not happen.

Please put some attention to this Smartsheet.