Unable to find a way to set up emails that alert users to task approvals

[MPH2]

I have a situation where a team wants to have folks who don't do there day-to-day in Workfront receiving task alerts in sent to their work email accounts. The people we are wanting to do this for aren't using Workfront much, if at all, in their normal day-to-day. But the team that is looking into this does, and they need a means to track project proposal approvals inside of Workfront. However, I have not found a way to send task alerts to anyone's email via the email notification system Workfront has. I have seen a few things here and there that look like they are looking to do something similar, because a notification inside of Workfront isn't always effective for one reason or another.

So:

Bob is a group admin in Workfront.

Joe is his director, and rarely, if ever, uses Workfront.

• Bob is sent a proposal request through Workfront.
  • Bob converts it to a project and then begins adding tasks
  • Bob needs Joe to either approve, or deny, this proposal
    • Bob creates a task that says "Approval required by Joe"
  • Joe gets a notification alert in his Workfront environment to approve/deny the proposal.
    • Joe is unaware that Bob has created a task that requires his approval because he spends most of his day in other services, or emails.
• How can Bob send Joe an email alert about the task requiring approval from Workfront? Is this possible without complicated development (for example Workfront Fusion)?

Thank you.

[Madalyn_Destafney]

Hi there, I'm a little confused because Joe's email alerts would go to his work email address, the email associated with his Workfront profile. So even if Joe's not in there every day, he can have the email notification on for 'a task is assigned to me' in this example and he'd get an email to his work email for it...

[MPH2]

Email notifications are turned on, but the notifications are only being received inside of the Workfront environment. No emails are going out.

[skyehansen]

similar confusion from me. 

1) is your environment configured to send email notifications?

2) has Joe inadvertently configured his account to switch them off?

3) is the project still in planning mode and hence not notifying anyone?

[MPH2]

1. This is our notification settings for the system:

2. Here is the account settings:

3. Project status is In Progress, Task is set to Pending Approval:

- Even after assigning the task, no email for the task being assigned, or requiring approval, is sent out. 

I feel like this shouldn't be as difficult as it is, but I am also certain that I am overlooking something pretty obvious.

Thank you,

[Madalyn_Destafney]

I'd check with your IT that the WF emails aren't being caught in a firewall or something, get the domain whitelisted.

[MPH2]

Just so I am coming at this from the right direction:

• The last image in the prior comment shows that the task is pending approval, but it has no assignee.
  • However, an in-system notification was received, just no email.
  • Should an email have been sent out, even though the task has no assignee? And should one have gone out if the task was requiring an approval from the team member in question?
• If I set the task progress status to anything below 100%, and assign the task to me, I don't get an email or in-system notification.
  • I am assuming that a test task might resolve that issue, but I would think an alert would go out for an existing task that has a status change and new assignee.

Thank you,

[skyehansen]

1) If you assign something to yourself, nothing ever goes out. Workfront assumes since you did the assigning, you don't need additional emails.

2) you're showing the wrong part of the user account settings, but that's ok, I can see that everything is checked on (it's under "Action Needed")

the only other thing you should screenshot would be the setup for your approval (how you configured it) -- this would probably be in the setup area, unless it's a custom approval just for this one task.

[MPH2]

So, notifications and emails go out for task assignments, projects assignments, etc. But for approvals of tasks, there are only in-system notifications, no emails going out. Most of the approval processes for tasks, look like this:

From what I can tell, creating approval processes is extremely basic, and not all that granular. But maybe we have the settings set up incorrectly for task approvals to send out emails to users?

[skyehansen]

Your screenshot for email notifications looked correct. However I do see it’s unlocked which usually indicates that a group may have it toggled it off. Best thing to do for testing would be to lock the email notification. 

[MPH2]

So, after banging around like cat chasing a toy, I think I figured it out. It looks like the tasks aren't being given an approval process. So, any time a task is created with the intent to have it approved, nothing happens. But once I assigned the test approval process I created to the task, assigned it to me, and then set the status to "Pending Approval", it fired off an email letting me know that I had a task to approve.

I really appreciate the help that you've given. If nothing else, it helped me get a better idea of what to look at and what to do to make the process work as we intended. 

Thanks a ton!