Notification when a request is rejected

[lucasbrito]

I want to be able to notify the requestor via email if his request is rejected by our approval team. Today, when doing so, it just changes the status of the request from New-Pending Approval to 'New' with no type of communication. I tried changing the Path to change the status to On-Hold if a rejection happens, but still no notification is sent out, unless I tag the user in the update section of the request. Has anyone found a solution to do this? 

[KatherineLa]

While there doesn't appear to be a specific 'Your Request was Denied' message per se, a requestor is simply raising an Issue with an approval path attached. So I would look at the alerts available that are associated to Requests/Issues, and leverage from there.

For example if I were trying to solve that scenario, and also assuming that 'Rejected' was equivalent to 'Dead' in our workflow, I would create a status option that's available for Issues called "Rejected", and set it to equate to 'Dead'. Then set the approval path to update the status to that newly created option.

Then the user does get the canned system alert that the status on their request has changed, and the description will reflect the rejection as expected.

(Don't forget to check that your users have that alert turned ON, or your efforts will be futile though.)

[lucasbrito]

Hi Katherine,

Thank you for the detailed response. In our case, it's not so much about a hard 'rejection' per say, we are just notifying the user that the request was not properly filled out, i.e. not all correct information was provided, so we want to give them a chance to fix it. So setting it to a 'Dead' status, would that allow the user to still see it and modify for it to then be routed for a second approval request? 

Hope this makes sense.

[KatherineLa]

You're welcome. In the case that a rejection means 'Please try again', I would not set my custom status to equate to Dead, but instead to In Progress with a better descriptive label that's a call to action for the end-user. Maybe something like 'Rejected-Incomplete'?

Using the Dead status MAY still allow the updates you want, but that will depend on how your Project settings are configured for your instance. (My sample below, where documents can still be uploaded to Closed or Dead projects for us.)

[KellieGardner]

I agree with Katherine. The best way to accomplish it is through the notifications of changing the status. Make sure the notification is turned on at the system or group level and then make sure that user hasn't turned the notification off in their profile. Using any status besides the initial status should meet the criteria for the notification. We like to use awaiting feedback or a custom status of rejected awaiting feedback.

The primary contact of the issue receives an email notification when the issue status changes, unless the user who changed the status is also the primary contact. 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/workfront/using/basics/use-notifications/notifications-reque...

[lucasbrito]

I have to be doing something wrong, as I believe I followed the advised steps but a notification still doesn't get sent out by just changing the status. 

Here is what I did with corresponding photos. 

1. Created a new status called 'Rejected-Incomplete' (picture 1)

2. Configured the approval process to change the status to 'Rejected-Incomplete' upon rejection. (picture 2)

3. Logged in a separate user, submitted a request. Logged back in as myself and rejected his request. (picture 3)

4. User received two emails from Workfront indicating his request had been created, but not one indicating it had been rejected. (picture 4)

5. This is a screenshot of my notifications settings. (picture 5)

[KatherineLa]

You're almost there I think, everything looks good in those screenshots to me at least.

The last piece is the difference between what you show in your picture #5 (settings for what is available for all users to adopt), and what that specific user has enabled in their profile for that alert. Typically when I have a user complain about missing alerts, it's because they went and disabled them and forgot about it. 

I'd bet you'll find that while you have the notification enabled globally, the specific user in question has it disabled or possibly set to Daily Digest. If your instance is complex enough, they may belong to a Group that has it restricted also.

Katherine

[KellieGardner]

In addition to the users notifications one more thing to check would include the status of the PO project. If the project is in planning or something similar the notifications might not work. 

[lucasbrito]

Before I move forward, I just wanted to truly thank you guys for all the support and patience throughout this process. I am a new admin to Workfront, so many of my questions are of a basic level. 

The base project that the Request was setup towards is currently set to Queue. 

Would that be an issue? Meanwhile, I will check on the individual user/group settings to see if I can catch the issue.

[KellieGardner]

You should also double check that the queue project is setup as a request queue under queue details. This notification only works on request queues and I don't believe it works for general "issues" 

The status changes on my request

The primary contact of the issue receives an email notification when the issue status changes, unless the user who changed the status is also the primary contact.

A notification is sent only if the project status is Current and the project is set up as a Help Request Queue

[skyehansen]

hi there, in case this is helpful to others, I want to state the obvious -- that the request needs to have been submitted via a queue -- i.e. either

1) from the requests area of your environment or

2) created in a project where the queue details in the project are set to Publish As Help Request Queue.

In a few cases, Workfront functionality distinguishes between issues and requests -- this might be one of those cases. Requests (submitted by queue) will trigger this email notification. Issues (created in the issues tab of a project) will probably not trigger this email notification (it hasn't, for my instance).

It has no bearing on whether your project is set to "queue" (I can set anything to queue) so please confirm those settings and the steps you take to put a request in that project. After this, it may be more beneficial for you to contact the helpdesk, as they are pretty good at walking you through steps.

[lucasbrito]

Here are the settings on the project that was setup to be the base of the request. See pic attached. 

The ways of working on request submission is to initiate it via the main menu, under the 'Requests' section, and then using the blue button for 'New Request'.

[KellieGardner]

@lucasbrito lucasbrito - I'm not sure if you ever verified the individuals notifications settings or not but that would be the last place you would need to check.

In the end, if the troubleshooting steps we've mentioned aren't helping I would suggest reaching out to support and they can take a dive into your system to see what's happening.

[Seanna_Hdz]

In addition to all the replies already received here, I would suggest implementing the use of dashboards on the user layout. Using the custom status is an excellent option. I would create a report that filters on that custom status and make it available on a dashboard the user always sees when in Workfront.