Project Notifications

OVERVIEW

Keeping Stakeholders in the loop is one of a Project Manager’s key duties, especially when the stakeholder is one of the individuals working on the project. Crafting project communications can be a time-consuming aspect of managing a project, so using automated alerts and notifications is popular, efficient, and leverages Salesforce’s core functionality. The project’s communications plan should dictate the audience, method, content, and quantity of notifications. Salesforce has the option to display both in-app and push notifications. Automated messages can use Chatter, email, or a combination of both to keep your users on track and informed.

BEST PRACTICES

There are endless opportunities and reasons to send users notifications. Sending the right message at the right time in the right way can be challenging. Not sending enough notifications means that key team members are not adequately informed, but sending too many will blend them into white noise. In either case, risk is increased when team members miss out on important messages. Common notifications might include:

A chatter post when a task is late
An email to the CFO project has exceeded its budget
An email to the user when their Timecard is not submitted on time

A notification might be sent for health status adjustments, ownership or assignment changes, and when financial or entered hours thresholds are met. Notifications can take the form of an email or a chatter post and can contain merge fields with Project or Task details or links. When crafting the right message and delivery method, the audience is a good guide. What level of information does the recipient need? Are they the client or the business side of the project relationship? Are they a junior member of the team or an executive? Consulting the organization’s communication plan can help to find the best fit for automating alerts and notifications. As with most automation in Salesforce, it is configured by an Administrator with access to Process Builder or Visual Workflow.

Consider this: When users receive too many notifications, the value of all notifications is diminished. Consider the desired outcome and timing of the notification. If a Project Manager uses Quick Subscribe to assign tasks in bulk when the project is created, and a single user gets assigned a large number of tasks, they may get an email for each of the tasks they have been assigned to, but weeks or months in advance of the task's calculated start date. Should the email notification be triggered by the calculated start date instead of the act of assignment? Does the user even need a notification if they're using My Assignments?

Knowledge Base

OVERVIEW

BEST PRACTICES

Was this article helpful?

Knowledge Base

OVERVIEW

BEST PRACTICES

Was this article helpful?

Related Articles