Custom Formulas and Variables in Automation
Hello, I have two requested features:
- Custom field formulas as automation triggers
- Using variables in automation
I would like to be able to trigger an automation based on a custom field that has a formula. In addition, I would like automations to be able to use custom fields to change other custom fields. Essentially, using a custom field as a variable. As far as I know, there is no way to do this.
Examples below: I tried to make this readable using bullet points, but the message box would not let me tab to a lower tier bullet point.
Scenario 1
- I manage a space that consists of purchase requests. There is a requirement that we must review the quality of all purchases.
What I want to accomplish
- When I see that we received the items, it would be great if I could check a checkbox and Wrike will then start a quality review process. Wrike will immediately send a message to the assigned quality reviewer and every seven days after until the quality reviewer confirms the quality.
How this feature would help
- The automation will set a custom field's date to today plus seven days. The seven days would be an integer that is held in another hidden custom field. That way we can freely change the number of days as needed.
- When the custom field date passes, the automation will send a reminder email, add the hidden custom field integer to the current date, and start the process over.
- This would be handled with around one or two rules.
Scenario 2
- The requester of a purchase request selects a priority level for the ticket. Using a rule for each priority level, Wrike then changes a custom field that is an integer to a number that represents the days allotted for each priority level. A custom field date, Purchase By Date, consists of a formula that takes the now changed integer custom field and adds the number to the start date of the ticket. This results in a date that describes when the products of the ticket should be purchased by.
What I want to accomplish
- When the Purchase By date passes, send an email to the requester if the products on the purchase request have not been purchased.
How this feature would help
- This one is simple; it would help by sending the requester a message when the date passes. Currently, I cannot select this Purchase By Date when creating an automation trigger, because the custom field is a formula that adds an integer to the Start Date of the ticket.
I can keep going and write a book about all the implementations I can create using these two features or even just the one using custom field formulas as a trigger. I know this is a wall of text, but I wanted to show the benefits of this.
Thank you,
Jesse Phillips
Hi Jesse Phillips 👋 Thanks so much for sharing such detailed feedback with use cases! I've already shared your suggestions with our Product team that owns automations 👍
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Hello Lisa, do you have some news about this new feature?
Hi Gabriele Sannicandro, welcome to the Community! Thank you for chiming in; we don't have updates about this suggestion at the moment, but we will keep you informed if anything changes 👍
Allow me to mention that you can check our New to Community forum to discover all the resources you can find in our Community 🙂
I add a related idea to add simple math functions to automation on custom number fields.
Beyond setting a custom number field's value or removing it, offer the ability to do simple math, as described in the article Adding Formulas to Custom Fields – Wrike Help Center. Ideally one could include that field's current value in calculating the next.
A minimal use case would be to support incrementing a number field by 1 each time an automation is run.
Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
I'm also running into scenarios where it would be great for automation to be able to set an item's Start and/or Due Dates to match those field values in its parent item. Like, when you move a task into a sprint (project) that has dates set and you want those to default for its tasks.
Along the same lines, we're also using a calculated field that would be great to base an automation on. I.e. in our contracts, we could have a 30-60-90 day notice of non-renewal period. We created a field that we could enter the contract end date and then add the number of days, and it will calculate the date by which we need to give notice of non-renewal if necessary. I'd like to be able to send a notification to the contract owner prior to that non-renewal date, but the field isn't available to select.
Thank you for your feedback, John. I have forwarded it to the team that handles Automations. 😊
Basudha Sakshyarika Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Sharon Ziska Our workaround for reminder dates is to have an automation for each reminder to be sent. However, this means that you cannot have an indefinite number of reminders.
How your reminders would be set up using our method:
In the "Do" section of the last reminder, you can have the automation change the Status from the Status that you created for the reminders if you feel that is necessary.
Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
I am also looking at this need. For example, we are using a custom field to calculate the time between the date a project or task was requested/created and the date that it is due - we also have conditional formatting set up. We want to be able to have that trigger another field to change and send a message to someone if that lead time is insufficient for the request that was placed. We have to do this using this custom field currently because the date field/timeline parameters aren't flexible enough for our lead times.
We have a custom field set up with a conditional formula to alert the PM if time spent is approaching the the task effort. It would be great if we could automate this to notify the PM when a value changes to a new condition.
Thank you, Rachel Harvey and Kelly Hanson for taking the time to provide detailed feedback along with your use cases. We'll ensure that your comments are forwarded to the relevant team 👍
Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
My scenario for using formula customer fields in automations is to alert my team when inventory is low and to create a task to replenish stock. Please add this feature.
Jesse Phillips https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-karr-84b9a890 Alliance?
Hi Lauren Karr, thanks for taking time to post your use case on how you intend to use Custom Fields with Automation. Your comment has been passed on to the Product Team. If there are any updates, I will be sure to inform you. 👍
Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover