Notify Dependent Task Assignee That Predecessor Task Has Been Completed

Thor Leach

Here's the setup:

 

I'm trying to get team members to use Smartsheet more. One of the ways I'd like them to use it, is to get them to mark a task as complete once it's been completed instead of me chasing them around and asking them if they've completed the task and then checking it off for them. I'd also like to automate the notification of the assignee of a dependant task that the predecessor has been completed (again, so I don't have to be the guy walking around asking people if their TPS reports are done or notifying them when someone else's TPS report has been completed).

 

1) It would of course be very simple to set up a notification that can be sent to a predefined group of users every time any task is completed, but I've found that this creates a lot of automated emails notifying a lot of people without a need to know and just results in everyone ignoring all of the notifications.

 

2) I could also manually create reminders for each task so that would reminders would be sent to the employee responsible for the next task. This would work, but would be time consuming.

 

3) I could add another contact list column called "Next Task Assignee" (or whatever) to each sheet a and set a sheet level reminder to ping that person when the preceding task is complete.

 

Number 3 would work and be pretty easy to implement and manage, but the assignee for the next task is already defined in my Assigned To column for that next task and the predecessor is already defined in my Predecessor column. I just can't figure out a way to write a formula that can pull the Predecessor information from it's own row and check that against the Complete/Not Complete status of that predecessor's row. 

 

Has anyone else written a formula to automate this kind of notification? Would anyone else find this useful?

 

And on that note, is there a repository of user written formulas where we can all share our hard work so others don't have to work so hard? I've got a coupld pretty good custom embed code generators (and I'm going to be improving them soon) if anyone's looking for something like that...

Thor Leach

I found some techniques that ALMOST solves the problem...

 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/notify-assigned-task-now-ready-their-work-begin

 

https://www.smartsheet.com/blog/support-tip-conditional-reminders

 

There was another thread (can't find it now) where Travis posted yet another workaround to try to accomplish this sort of "I finished a task early" notification that was rather convoluted and required the recipient to go in and delete a field or else the reminder would continue to be sent out every day.

Thor Leach

These sort of conditional notifications seem like a no brainer. Why aren't they built into smartsheet?

 

There's conditional formatting, which would work beautifly if only it could talk to Notifications or Reminders.

 

There are Notifications, which could be made to work very easily (with the relatively simiple addition of a "Next Assignee column"), but those can't be directed towared a Contact List Column and so won't work at all.

 

There are Reminders, but these can only be tied to a date column and so require tricky formulas that must be deleted by the user upon receipt.

 

You're so close Smartsheet! 

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Thor-- I think I may have already commented this on another post but just in case, I wanted to let you know that our Development team is currently working on Conditional Notifications in the Smartsheet application and though I don't have an exact release date for this functionality, I think it will address a lot of the issues you've brought up in this post. 

Thor Leach

Kennedy,

 

That's great! That will help considerably with this issue, and with other issues as well. Is there any way that I can be notified when this Conditional Notification is realeased so that I can start using it right away?

 

Or, if the current version is stable and ready for Beta testing...

 

-Thor

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Thor-- When released, this will (probably!) be publicized in the application with a splash screen and here in the Community. We also outline every new release here in our Release Notes 

Thor Leach

Thanks Kennedy!

Shaine Greenwood

Hi All,

 

As mentioned, we're actively working on this feature. If you have ten minutes to spare, we'd love to get your participation in a usability study we're running.

 

For more information, see this annoncement:

https://community.smartsheet.com/announcement/weigh-smartsheets-next-strategic-feature

 

Thor Leach

Sure! Sign me up :-)

 

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Thor,

 

Glad you're interested! Follow the link in my previous comment that leads to the announcement to learn more and participate.

Holly Wright

It sounds like there is a solution close to being released back in September. Was this functionality added? If not, what's the status?

 

Really looking forward to being able to do this in my sheets!!

 

Thanks!

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Holly,

 

This feature hasn't yet been added to Smartsheet and we currently don't have a timeframe for when this will be available in the application.

Holly Wright

Oh, that's a bummer, but I appreciate the update!  It sounded like y'all were actively working on it in the fall.  What changed?

DanS

Hi, 

Notify Dependent Task Assignee That Predecessor Task Has Been Completed - has this feature been released?

Thanks in advance,

Dan

BrianSmith

Is there any update on this? It would be nice to only see "active" tasks that are not held up by incomplete dependencies. 

Thanks! 

B

smaguire

Sounds like this feature has been scrapped and I can't imagine why. In my opinion dependency relationships are a core part of project tracking, and in smartsheet they have almost no functionality whatsoever which is frustrating.