Notification of Assignee when predecessor is 75% complete

Michelle Phillips · 10/02/18

All

My project team members want to have "look ahead " insight into tasks they have upcoming. Is there a way to notify the assignee of the successor task when the predecessor is 75% complete, or x number of days from completion. Currently they receive the notification the day the task is to start.

Any suggestions are welcome

Regards

Michelle P

Shaine Greenwood · 10/03/18

Hi Michelle,

You can create a reminder based around a date column which will alert people up to 14 days before a task is going to start. More info on alerts in Smartsheet here: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/2476191-alerts-stay-on-track-with-automatic-notifications-and-reminders

Michelle Phillips · 10/03/18

So alerts and notifications only are applicable to date columns and there is no way to base an alert or notification off of a % Complete?

Andrée Starå · 10/04/18

Hi Michelle,

Try this.

If your projects are similar and you use a template, this could work great, but it will probably be too cumbersome otherwise.

Create a new checkbox column (Assignee Notification) and add the formula below in the successor tasks)

=IF([% Complete]5 >= 0,75; 1; 0)

([% Complete]5 (Change the 5 to the predecessor for the task)

This will check the box if the percent complete is 75% or more, and then you can trigger a notification based on that.

Depending on your country you’ll need to exchange the semi-colon to a comma in the above formula.

Would that work for you?

I hope this helps you!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant @ Get Done Consulting

J. Craig Williams · 10/04/18

re: Depending on your country you’ll need to exchange the semi-colon to a comma in the above formula.

First change the comma to a period, the semi-colon to a comma.

We will never have world peace.

Craig

Paul Newcome · 10/04/18

It isn't that you can't base it off of a % Complete. They just don't have a way to look at predecessors in the alerts. (Yes Craig... I'm submitting an Enhancement Request for this too. Haha)

Shaine Greenwood · 10/04/18

Hi Michelle—

As Paul put it, you can definitely base a notification off of % complete, or even use it as an additional condition which is required before the notification will be sent out.

You might try starting by creating an alert which will be triggered once the % complete column reaches 0.75 and see if that gets you where you need.

If it doesn't, you can take some of the other suggestions in this thread and add to your process.

I typically start from the Occam's Razor school of thought, then if my razor is too dull, I sharpen it just a bit with more alert conditions and formulas.

Michelle Phillips · 10/04/18

Thanks all for your suggestions. Once I changed the ; to , Andre's suggestion worked great!

Andrée Starå · 10/05/18

Thanks!

I'll change my disclaimer, and maybe the world peace will get one step closer.

Andrée Starå · 10/05/18

Great!

Happy to help!

Paul Newcome · 10/05/18

I think I am going to try to figure out a way to incorporate predecessors into this as some kind of formula. If you don't have a lot of them it's not too bad, but setting it up for each individual line item (some of which have multiple predecessors) can get rather time consuming and tedious.

I'm thinking something along the lines of the already established flexible row id's in coordination with an INDEX/MATCH. At first thought that seems pretty straight forward, but when you start including the SS, FS, SF, etc. along with lag and/or lead time in addition to multiple predecessors... This may take a while... Haha

J. Craig Williams · 10/05/18

My comment was not intended as a dig on you.

I was actually in Sweden when I realized world peace would never happen.

I was watching a hockey game and realized the clock was moving in the 'wrong' direction. I then realized that it wasn't 'wrong', just different than Canadian/US hockey that I am used to.

Further I realized that SOMEONE had to be first but SOMEONE ELSE decided it was better the other way and then wars happen.

Don't get me started on toilet paper rolls.

Craig

Andrée Starå · 10/05/18

I didn't take it as a dig on me. No worries!

Toilet paper rolls

Notification of Assignee when predecessor is 75% complete

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