How to pause the countdown?

Nikhil Bhardwaj

We use Smartsheet as our ticketing system and v get tickets from internal customers. Most of the time, my team needs to get some confirmation or some additional information from the requestor. In the workflow that I created, I had put the number of days my team has, to complete a ticket. So if a ticket is submitted and v choose that it should be completed in 30 days, the countdown starts immediately when the ticket is assigned. But as most of the time need additional information from the requestor, I want the countdown to pause until we get an update from them. How can I do it?

And we have status column. So to be precise, when I choose "Additional info needed", as we are waiting from the requestor I want the countdown to pause. And when v get a response and I will change the status to "In progress", I want the countdown to start again. Any ideas??

Debbie Sawyer

This is a good question!

Off the top of my head, I would say you need to record the date/time when the clock needs to start ticking. Have a Today() somewhere as an absolute reference where you are doing a date difference and storing the result somewhere. Then you need to record the Date/time when the status changes to Additional info Needed, record the time when the Additional Info is received, do a date difference between these two time and incorporate it into the original counter formula.

At SBP we have an app that will extract the timestamp from a status change which enables it to be used in a formula. So we have the tools to do the date diff between the actions.

A good solution would be to use a relational model for the activities using an Index(Match()) type function to pull back the latest action to the main table.

So I think that is how I would solve this! Split the actions into a related sheet, use our Cell Level Timestamp Manager to capture the date/times of the activities and report it back to the main sheet using Index(Match()) type statements.

I believe it to be achievable, but it isn't a quick one.

Happy to help more and show how a related table can link back to a main table as described here if you wanted to investigate further. Our website has details on our SmarterControls4Smartsheet. My email address is in My Profile if you wanted to connect.

Kind regards

​Debbie Sawyer

Consultant & Training Manager

 

Andrée Starå

Hi @Nikhil Bhardwaj

Please have a look at my post below with a method I developed that could help.

More info: 

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/68589/lock-or-store-date-value-solution-without-using-zapier

What do you think?

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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