Automated Reminder for Approval Request?

David Hersher · 01/22/19

Hello,

Is there an easy way to send an automated reminder based on an approval request? We automate approvals from some of our Smartsheets and would love for a reminder to be sent x days later if the approval status is still "Submitted".

I can't find where I can build a reminder based on the status change plus a number of days. And I don't know of a formula to populate another date field that would pick up the status date. The closest I can get is the system date of when the row was last changed, but that's subject to any change in the row.

Anyone using reminders this way?

Thank you,

Dave

Paul Newcome · 01/24/19

You could do this with 2 helper columns. One would be for manual entry of the date it was submitted. The other would be another date type column with...

=[Submitted Date]@row + 10

This will populate a date that is 10 days (or however many days you want to designate) after the submitted date. Yo could then set your reminders to send based on that column.

David Hersher · 01/24/19

Thank you, Paul. That's a simple workaround. I appreciate the help!

Dave

Paul Newcome · 01/24/19

Happy to help!

Jerome DEGUINE · 02/12/19

Hello David, Paul,

About this question, I see how to set an alert with the 2nd date column, but how can we send the approval request again to the user that needs to approve a row ?

If I just send a reminder, the user will have to search into within his mailbox to find the approval mail again and then process to the approval.

Would it be possible to send him the approval email again X days later if the approval has not been done ?

From my searches, the only way would be to clone the approbation request and make a new one that use the 2nd date column to be launched. But it seems quite an heavy process just for this. And If I want to repeat my reminder every 3 days, I have to make 10 approval request copy and 10 date columns...

Any other idea for this specific question ?

David Hersher · 02/12/19

Hi Jerome,

You can customize the language of the reminders, and there are links within the email to the approval form and underlying sheet, but you're correct about the challenges you've identified. It's not a perfect process.

I have the original and two reminders set up. Every org is different, but that has at least satisfied the 80/20 rule for me. For the couple that don't respond by the 2nd reminder I'm on the phone or in their doorway anyway.

Dave