Question

Automated emails to clients if extension is required

  • 5 November 2021
  • 20 replies
  • 238 views

I’m looking for a way to send an automated email to client IF an extension is required for planned work.

The work would start on 1/1 with a planned as work status. i would like to have the client emailed after a certain number of day if the work status is still has a work status of planned.  Is this possible?


20 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hi Christopher. Welcome to the Karbon community.

That’s a great idea! There’s in nothing in Karbon that would handle that right now, so you could manage it manually with a trigger for a staff member to send the email if the conditions are right.

The automatic email sending is pretty rudimentary right now and the only option is to choose how many days after the work starts to send the email.

On the left pane, there’s a place to submit ideas to the Karbon product team.

Does that help at all?

Yes it does - thank you!

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

@Christopher T Raines Really great question.  I have a question back for you - in your work item, do you have a specific task for extensions?  Or do you have any statuses specific to extensions - like Extension Needed?

There might be a round about way to make this work, but will depend a lot on how your work template is setup and statuses, and will rely heavily on automation along with some human interaction as well.

@kylenecarse  I’m in the planning stage to redo my 1040 workflow.  I’m in my 2nd year with Karbon and I’m scraping my workflow from last year.  So, I’m at a good point to rethink the entire workflow. I was thinking about using a “client task” for the extension note.  My thought is to set to send 73 days after 1/1 start. The email would go out to the client if no action is taken. IF the work comes in before the 73 days it looks like i have to make sure we some  how change the setting on that client workflow to suppress or delete the auto email.

hopefully that makes sense…

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

Okay this is helpful!  We are doing the same with our workflow too, and I love a good work/task automation challenge.  Let me see if I can come up with something and I’ll ping you back with anything I can come up with.  

You might also want to reach out to your CSM and see if they might be able to help you with a solution.

We actually do have an extension task as the very first task in our tax work items that was a recommendation from when we onboarded with Karbon.  We are trying to make that more functional for how our processes flow, so this is actually a timely challenge!

Thank you! I have a “work canceled” as my first step as recommended by CSM but may rethink that.

The cancelled status will prevent the email (i think) so maybe the answer to this relates to how the cancelled status impacts the workflow status and remaining tasks.

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

:worried:  Soooo I need to correct myself!  I got turned around on the allowed automation.  Like @max  stated above, the automation on the Client Task item itself is very limited.  

You can definitely set the client task for the extension notification to send out automatically, but you run the risk of everyone getting an email at 73 days, regardless of the status they are in unless the work is complete due to the automation limitations.

I think, but I’m not sure, if you complete that “work cancelled” task, it would complete the entire work item with automation, which would prevent the automated email, but probably would cause more issues than it helps solve to prevent the email sending.  

I can share a screen shot of my current Extension task in the work with the automation we have right now.  That might at least give you ideas on how to trigger statuses, which could then alert the admin function that an extension notice needs to be sent to the client.  Just let me know if that would be helpful!

@kylenecarse The screen shot would be extremely helpful! thank you so much.  

 

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

Okay, here is a screenshot of the Extension task.  It’s the very first task in our tax work items.  I added in a Client Task afterwards to give you an idea of how this could somewhat work.  We are revamping the process so I crossed out an automator that isn’t working.

Here is a video that explains how we use this automation.  

Check with your CSM, there might be a way for them to bulk change a client task sending date for work in a certain status, if you have the Bulk Upload feature with your Karbon subscription.  That occurred to me at the end of the video.  

Hope this helps and sorry for the confusion earlier!!

Thank you! This has been very helpful - I appreciate your help!!

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

We are also getting ready to revamp our workflow, so this conversation is interesting to me. :)

The main area we are addressing now is client follow-up and designing the standard way we follow-up with clients.

We are also thinking about experimenting with letting automators adjust the due dates of the work item based on when people submit their documents so that we can have a true first in, first out approach.

What do y’all think about sharing your work item once it’s finished? I love seeing how other people are leveraging Karbon.

 

@max , heck ya! I set up my template in excel first so i can send to you at any time. Would like to do before i go ahead and make the change since this revamp is for our most used template. I would love to get the clients in a true fifo line up. I think our system is somehow doing this but I’m not comfortable with that since I dont know how the system is generating the date field.  The client interaction with karbon is tough for a few reasons: clients are not consistent and any large upload of documents is a nightmare. Would like to understand how others are handling the large volume of documents sent through karbon.  Looking forward to sharing our workflow designs.

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

For large documents, we use the “Request Document” feature in One-Drive: MS Help Doc

I add the link to the body of the client task with a little message:

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

On the topic of sharing ideas and template information back and forth, we could do that here, but I think we will need new threads. We could also move that more detailed collaboration to Microsoft Teams and then come back and post a how-to here in the community.

My main concern is that this community is basically public to anyone on the internet, which is great in many ways, but it’s not so great when talking about certain business details.

If anyone is interested, here’s a link to sign up for my experimental Karbon Collaborators team:

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

The first step in our workflow for 1040s is an automatic email that sends late January early February asking for documents.  You could schedule an automatic email to send so many days after the start of the work within the template.  If this isn’t needed, you could check it off as completed and it will not send.

 

Hi @DianeK ,

i think that is the solution to clear the task within the extension email that i set for 73 days after 1/1. Just have to rely on human interaction to clear the task.

thank you

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

So, it looks like if the client task is marked complete, the email will not send:

I will test this further by scheduling client tasks for tomorrow morning, but if this is the case, as long as someone marks the client task complete the task.

Is this what you meant by your comment, @Christopher T Raines?

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

@max  Yes, once the client task has been marked completed, you will not be able to send it or it won’t send automatically because it is completed.  We have used this method for a while now and it works great.

@max Yes that’s correct. We will have someone clear that client task so the email will not send based on our set 73 days after the start date.  @DianeK is on target.  In our flow it’s a 2 step process for client’s in house before our extension “warning”. Admin clears both the client task email and our document received task.

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

I love it. What I would love more is if we could complete client tasks with an automator, but I’ll work this into our templates for now.

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