Many project management workflows involve tasks that are repeated on a regular basis, like notifying team members of upcoming deadlines, logging task completion dates, or assigning new tasks to different team members. With native automations, Spreadsheet.com makes it easy to automatically complete these types of tasks without any additional work beyond regular updates to your project management workbooks.
In this guide, we’ll take a look at how to quickly set up an automation that notifies team members of upcoming deadlines in just a few simple steps.
Before you start automating project tasks, Spreadsheet.com makes it easy for you to get a head start on your project management strategy with dozens of ready-to-use project management templates. Here, we’ll take a look at Spreadsheet.com’s Product Launch Plan template.
Like most other Spreadsheet.com templates, the Project Launch Plan template includes powerful features like Gantt chart views, Calendar views, row hierarchies, and rich data types to transform a simple project task list into an all-in-one project management solution.
Begin automating tasks by adding a new automation to your workbook. Click the Automations button in the View toolbar above your worksheet…
… to open the Automations Library, where you can begin from a pre-configured automation recipe or create your own from scratch. For this example, we’ll start with a blank automation by clicking the blue + Create from scratch button on the left side of the dialog.
When you configure a new automation, you need to define a Trigger (the event that will make the automation run) and an Action (what will happen when the automation is run). Click the “When” button in the trigger block to choose an option from the dropdown.
We want our automation to notify team members when a deadline is approaching, so we’ll select “When a Date arrives”. Then, we can configure the other fields in the trigger block to specify when the automation should run.
Now, our automation will be triggered one day before a task’s deadline at 9AM and we can move on to define the action. For this automation, we want to notify team members via email, but Spreadsheet.com’s integrations with third-party apps let you send these messages through other services like Microsoft Teams and Slack.
By clicking the “Notification” button in the action block, we can customize our notification email and include data directly from our worksheet.
And by clicking “User”, we can specify who the notification is sent to. For this automation, we’ll send it to the task owner assigned in Column I - Owner. Finally, we’ll save the automation.
Really – you don’t have to do anything. When your automation is automatically triggered, Spreadsheet.com will handle the heavy lifting and execute whatever action you defined.
Take the time you’re saving and go for a walk, get a coffee, or brag to a coworker about how Spreadsheet.com is doing your job for you.
It’s that simple.
Ready to start automating your workflow and reclaiming valuable time? Get started with Spreadsheet.com today for free. Browse our Template Gallery to find dozens of project management templates, as well as templates for product development, finance, operations, and more. Or, start with a blank workbook to begin building your project plan from scratch.