Automatic Weekly Alert or Report

Arthur A

Hi, 

I have a master sheet that tracks a lot of tasks of a couple of projects with status as: not started, in progress, or complete.  I want it to send an automatic alert or report that has all tasks with status as "in progress" and finish date falls in any week (for example, May 6 - 10), say at 7:00am Monday morning. I explored both under "Alerts & Actions" and "Solution Center" -> Create -> report, but could not seem to find such functionality at sheet level. 

Any suggestions welcome and thank you in advance!

AA

Andrée Starå

Hi Arthur,

The Send as Attachment for the sheet will send what is visible so if you have a filter active it would send that view, but I'm not sure if the filter stays active.

I would recommend doing it with a report instead where you can set it up exactly as you'd like.

In the Report Builder, you'd set it up like:

What? Status is In progress

When? Finish Date is in the next 7 days.

Would that work?

Let me know if you need any help!

Have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

Arthur A

Hi, Andrée,

Thanks for your advice, but it doesn't work for my purpose - an automatically send report at 7am Monday morning that contains all tasks "in progress" with a "finish" date in that week. 

Filter works in a way that you have to manually adjust the timeframe, such that

Status -> in progress

Finish -> is between Sunday & following Saturday (this is where the manual adjustment comes in)

The filtered results are exactly what I wanted, but it's a manual process. 

Report Builder can get similar results but without parent rows, which is problematic for me since I have many subtasks with same names. And again, I didn't find an option to send weekly report automatically.

Thanks as always!

AA

Andrée Starå

Happy to help!

The report can be set up to include parents, but you'll have to format (add a helper column) the sheet for the report to be able to differentiate between children/parents.

You can set up the report to send weekly: File > Send as Attachment > Delivery: Schedule

Would that work?

Best,

Andrée

Arthur A

Hi, Andrée,

I have done this before, and as far as I can remember, it tracks only the tasks that I'm filtering now.  For example, I turned the filter on to track all subtasks that are "in progress" and "finish" between April 7 (Sunday) and April 13 (Saturday). For the first week, I received all tasks.  But as projects progress and when I changed the status from "in progress" to "complete", eventually, I received an attachment with zero tasks. 

Thanks for your help!

AA

Andrée Starå

I'm always happy to help!

So we are talking about the same thing, I'm talking about the report builder and not the sheet filter.

Can you describe your process in more detail and maybe share the sheet(s) or some screenshots? (Delete/replace any confidential/sensitive information before sharing) That would make it easier to help. (share too, andree@getdone.se)

Best,

Andrée

RoseG

Once you set up an automation to send weekly - if you want to change a parameter on the cadence, can you do this? I don't see anywhere to recall the original and edit it.

Thanks!

Genevieve P.

Hi @RoseG

Are you talking about an automation set as a Workflow on the source sheet, or do you mean a recurring "send as attachment" option from a Report or Sheet?

If you mean the "send as attachment" cadence, you can edit it from the dropdown arrow next to the automation:

Cheers,

Genevieve