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Notify a User That an Item is Ready for Review

Sarto Jama Updated by Sarto Jama

Scenario

This article will discuss using Scheduled Tasks to automatically send notification emails to users whenever a project or item is due. This workflow is ideal for users looking for an automated way to notify their users when due dates are approaching.

Requirements

At minimum, ensure that your object has at least 1 Date/Time field that will be used to track the due date, an Email field that will be used to track who the email will be sent to, and an Equation field that will be used to determine the due date using the initial Date/Time field.

These can be new or existing fields in your object. 

Steps

Setup your Equation

Once you have added your required fields, you can proceed to create your Date equation. This equation will be used to determine when the notification email will be sent based on the value of a Date/Time field.

To edit your equation, click on the ellipses icon for the field and select 'Settings':

Select 'Date' for the Equation type, 'Days' for your Date Type and 'Date' for your result type. For your equation, select the Date/Time field that will be used in this equation and add it to the number of days until the due date:

For this example, the due date will be 30 days after the value in the 'Date Checked Out' Date/Time field:

You can learn more about setting up date equations in our support article Date Equation Settings.

Add your Task

Once you have set up the fields in your object, you are ready to set up your task. Click on the Tasks tab on the right side of the page and press the Add Task button:

Scheduled tasks are only available for the Pro plan and above.

The Task section of the Builder is where you will name your task and set your tasks’ schedule. Here is where you will determine how often you task will run, what time it will run and the date it will run next:

If you're unsure or would like to play it safe, choosing to pause your task at this point is a great way to avoid accidentally sending emails to your contact list. You can pause your task by setting the status to 'Off', then turn it back on when you're ready.

Set your Action

Once you have named your task and set your schedule, you will move on to the Action tab. This is where you can determine what will happen when your task triggers (Action), when your task will trigger, who the email notification will be sent to (Send) and what the message will include.

In order to send an email notification, click the dropdown next to the Action label and select ‘Send a custom email for each record’:

The 'When' section is where we will use the Date Equation we created in Step 1. Click the 'add criteria' link to expose filter options. This will allow you to determine exactly which records the task will send a notification to. For the first field option, select your Equation field from the list of fields in the dropdown. For the second field, choose the 'is today' option:

This will ensure that a notification email will only be sent to users when their 'Due Date' (determined by the equation) falls on that particular day.

In the Send section, click the ‘a custom email address’ option and select ‘an email field’ from the dropdown menu. You should see your email field default in the recipient field. If you have email fields in connected objects, clicking on this email field will allow you to select them from the dropdown:

The Message section is where you will craft your notification email. You can add text and images to customize your email. In addition to this, you can use Field Tags to dynamically fill in values in your email such as Name and Date based on the values stored in the field for that record:

Once you have crafted your task to send the perfect email notification, press the Update Task button to save your work. This will officially create your task. If the status of your task was set to 'On', your task will run on the next run date. Otherwise, it will not run until you update the status to 'On'.

To update your task in the future, view the history or manually run it, click on the ellipses icon for the task and select the correct option from the dropdown:

Optional Features

Notify Users in Connected Objects

If your object is connected to another object that contains an email field, you can choose to send your notification emails to this field instead:

When setting up your task, make sure to select the email field from your connected object:

Use Filters to Specify Who Gets Notified

In addition to setting filters to determine when a notification email is sent, you can also set filters to create other criteria for your notifications as well. For example, only sending notifications if an item is due and a user is a part of a certain team:

CC, BCC and Reply To Options

In addition to selecting a recipient, you can also choose to add a CC, BCC and Reply To Address to your notification emails. CC and BCC will allow you to send a copy of each email to:

The Reply-To option will allow you to determine which email address replies will be sent to. You can choose to have it sent to a custom email address. Or, send it to an email address within your object or connected objects (for example, having employee replies sent to the connected manager for review):

Notes and Troubleshooting

  • You can view the Mail Delivery History for your task by selecting on the History tab and clicking the 'View Mail Delivery History' link:
  • Email dropped or bounced? Learn more about each email delivery status here.
  • If your task is set to send email notifications to email addresses in a connected object, be sure that there is a value for that connection field in the parent object so that the relationship between the two objects can be established.

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