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Christina_Jarosz
Christina_Jarosz
New Participant
March 16, 2020
Question

Suddenly Missing Task Assignment Emails - anyone else?

  • March 16, 2020
  • 24 replies
  • 3841 views

We're having a serious issue in our Workfront instance. I've reached out to Workfront and they are continuing to say that the behavior is what is expected. This is NOT how Workfront has worked the past 2+ years.

Our users are no longer receiving any email notification when they are assigned a task at the time of the project becoming active. Something has changed on the back end.

Scenario:

  1. We convert a request to a project. At conversion, project begins in planning.
  2. We make staff the project with assignments.
  3. We make a number of adjustments, delete unnecessary task, verify custom form information is correct, setup project sponsor, etc.
  4. Once verified schedule matches the necessary deliverable dates, we turn the project current.
  5. All users assigned a task receive an email that says "New Work Request" and they get notice they were assigned a task.

Now - #5 is not happening at all. No users are receiving email notifications even though their notifications are on. Which means, our users aren't aware they have tasks assigned to them. Previously, they received email notifications when the project was turned current.

Workfront is indicating that 'this is expected behavior' and the only time they would get task notifications is at the time of staffing. In other words, when the project becomes current they would not receive any notification of a task.

Is anyone else experiencing this? The time between #1 and #4 can be at times extended as we look to gather more information. So this makes no sense to turn a project current that is A) not setup correctly yet and B) not ready to be worked on.

I'm at a loss and I've needed to alert our users that they can no longer depend on email notifications to know when they have work assigned to them. This is a becoming a huge issue.

Help!

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Christina Jarosz

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    24 replies

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    K
    KevinQu1
    New Participant
    March 17, 2020
    I was told, more than once, after much discussion, that Denise's (and thus Christina's) behavior is "as expected": If a project is Active, notifications go out when assignments are made, new tasks created, whatnot. If the project is in Planning, then any assignments you make, changes, etc. will not trigger notifications when the project is switched to Active. I was told this was to avoid the "flood of multiple emails/notifications" that would result in many circumstances. Can't say I disagree really, in our case, though we still sometimes wish the notifications were sent. This has been the case since we launch last October, and was even described to us this way by the Implementation Specialist. We followed-up on this a couple months later (because honestly we forgot) and Support confirmed. It is what drove us to create Planner and Worker dashboards and to steer people away from 100% reliance on email and in-system notifications. "Use Your Dashboards" is a sort of mantra around here. Kevin Quosig
    skyehansen
    skyehansen
    New Participant
    March 17, 2020
    Anthony and Doug: I'm from the alternate universe, where New Work Request notifications are sent out when a project goes planning to current and there's no coronavirus, if that's helpful. Oh, and cluster 5. And yes, Christina, I heard back from the product manager and submitted a ticket as well. -skye
    Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore
    Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore
    New Participant
    March 17, 2020
    Indeed Anthony, "Two men say they're Jesus One of them must be wrong..." - Dire Straights Or in this case, on different clusters. Or have different notification settings. Or underlying Status. Or something else. Good luck tracking it down, Christina. It would be reassuring to learn the root cause. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore
    imgrund
    imgrund
    Employee
    March 17, 2020
    This thread is very interesting. I was asking around and our people say they never get a New Work Request email when a project goes from Planning to Current. They just get the a project you are on is now Current email. Now they do get a New Work Request email when they are added to a project that is already Current. Anthony Imgrund FCB
    Christina_Jarosz
    Christina_JaroszAuthor
    New Participant
    March 17, 2020
    Jill / Skye – can you perhaps put in a ticket? The case # is 00195563. Workfront has a Level III tech working on this and have been helpful, but still state that this is working as it should.
    J
    JillAc
    New Participant
    March 17, 2020
    Absolutely that is how it has always worked for us. Right now we are in the horrible position of dead-ing projects and have not made any new ones but I'll keep my eye on the next one. Also, when you turn Current to Planning to Current a certain number of notifications also go out that can be confusing (Your project is now current!) and I've been getting some of those.
    skyehansen
    skyehansen
    New Participant
    March 16, 2020
    Christine: I've duplicated this problem in my own instance, notified my counterpart, and I'll send a quick note to the product manager at workfront to see what's up. (I don't see any value to putting in a ticket as long as Support is holding to that stance) -skye
    DeniseMoore
    DeniseMoore
    New Participant
    March 16, 2020
    For us, it has never been part of the functionality that once the project is changed to "in progress" (equates to "current") that the email notifications are pushed out for all "active" tasks. (Active" task being one in which doesn't have a predecessor or the predecessor has been met.) However, for us, if an assignment is made while the project is actually in the status of "in progress" that is the only time the email notification is pushed out to the assignees and/or team. That's how it has worked for us for the past 7 years. Denise Moore | Ameritas ® | Senior Analyst, Project Management 5900 'O' Street, Lincoln, NE 68510 | p: 402-325-4285 | f: 402-325-4069 | denise.moore@ameritas.com *******
    Christina_Jarosz
    Christina_JaroszAuthor
    New Participant
    March 16, 2020
    Correct. The expected behavior is no task assignments (while project was in planning) are sent via email notification. When the project is turned from planning to current, those tasks are now active and thus SHOULD receive an email notification that a task has been assigned to them. This is no longer happening. They're not getting any task notifications - unless you are adding them to an already current project. Skye - I did escalate, but the response was that this was the expected behavior. I was hoping that others might have experienced the same thing.
    DeniseMoore
    DeniseMoore
    New Participant
    March 16, 2020
    That is how it has always worked within our instance...when the project's status is "in planning" it doesn't send task assignment emails out. And doesn't send out any emails for those previously assigned tasks when the project is changed to "in progress." Many of our projects have multiple tasks assignments that won't be active for days or even maybe weeks. No need for tons of emails to be received for those tasks. So, we have always assigned the tasks while in planning to prevent that from happening when we put the project "in progress." We really only want email notifications on items that need attention. Denise Moore
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