Predecessors / Notifications When an Item is Ready to Start | Community
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sydneyp50459827
Level 5
October 26, 2018
Question

Predecessors / Notifications When an Item is Ready to Start

  • October 26, 2018
  • 6 replies
  • 971 views
Is there a notification option in Workfront that would tell a user when an item is ready to start? I understand this functionality is available in Workfront Home, but our PMO users want to receive a notification in Outlook telling them when a task or issue is ready to start. This notification would be sent when the predecessor(s) are complete. I never really thought about this need for a notification until now, but it sounds like a reasonable request to me! (plus, we are holding off on training our users on Home until as close to the 19.1 release date as possible. There's only a small group of users that are currently using My Work anyway) I pulled a column onto a PMO dashboard I created that shows a column "Ready to Start" ("Pending Predecessor" is the report field I used) with a red icon if it's not ready and a green icon if it is. Does anyone have a similar need? Has anyone done something similar or have any ideas that are more functional than my report column shown below? (I can't filter the report because not every task has a predecessor) Sydney Peterson Diversified Communications, Inc.
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6 replies

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VicAl1
Level 10
October 26, 2018
Hi Sydney, Yes, WF should already do this for you. Just make sure you have the notifications turned on and the successor task has to be assigned to an Individual (not a Team name or Role). Then that Individual should get an email when the predecessor is complete. They might have to have a Work license or above (can't remember). But yes it should do all that for you.
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TerryHy
Level 8
October 26, 2018
To add to what Vic said, if you go to Setup --> Notifications, under Information about Work Assigned to Me, there is this setting that you can make global: Task Completion to Task Dependents (A predecessor of one of my tasks is completed) Terry Hynd EBSCO Information Services
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    JillAc
    Level 10
    October 29, 2018
    This is one of my biggest frustrations. What could be more important than telling a user that their task is ready to start? IMHO, nothing! So while there is a notification that others have pointed out, I have found this to be the least informative and most confusing notification, and it is "by design" which I found out after questioning it, thinking it was a bug. The "Ready to Start" notification is not clear at all. The user gets a notification that the predecessor is done (which is in GIANT font and is also the least important piece of information in the notification which makes it really confusing to people who can't understand why they are getting it, and thusly wind up turning it off, so there's that problem), and then it shows at the bottom which tasks are ready to start. BUT the ready to start tasks listed don't say your name, it says which ROLES are ready to start working on which tasks. It also lists all the other tasks ready to start that often have nothing to do with the person getting the notification. And to top it off, If there are more than a couple of tasks that are ready to start, the notification doesn't have room to list them all, so you may get this notification and your task that is ready to start isn't even listed!! Jill Ackerman
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    Community Advisor
    Sheri_WhittenCommunity Advisor
    Community Advisor
    August 23, 2019
    @Jill Ackerman we so agree! We are trying to create a workaround, but as you said, "What could be more important than telling a user that their task is ready to start? IMHO, nothing!" Did you ever create anything on the Idea Exchange? Sheri Whitten Gordon Food Service
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    Community Advisor
    Sheri_WhittenCommunity Advisor
    Community Advisor
    August 28, 2019
    Found this Idea Exchange idea, which looks like something that would help, but it needs more votes/points. It has 400, but needs 450 points to be considered: Create or customize email templates for any notification type to include custom form data Sheri Whitten Gordon Food Service
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    JillAc
    Level 10
    September 2, 2019
    It was so long ago I can’t remember if I created an Idea or found an existing one to vote on. Notifications is the part of Workfront I find most frustrating, overall. Jill
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