Question

Client tasks - notifications

  • 6 September 2022
  • 12 replies
  • 229 views

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Hi All

With Client Tasks - we send out annual questions to clients for preparation of their financial statements and tax returns. We have a Client Task section with individual tasks for responses, download/upload files etc.

The Assignee for the Work is the Accountant. But we send the Client Tasks from me (Practice Manager)

When the client responds to each individual task both myself and the accountant get triage notifications. This morning each of us has 10+ notifications in triage for this one client/work item. Hugely distracting.

  1. Would be better if only one person got the notifications (either assignee or sender, not both) and maybe to have option to choose which person for each client task section?
     
  2. Would be even better if we didn’t get notifications on each individual task within the section, but a summary or daily update on the client task section overall (i.e. if client has updated a task during a 24 hour period, then the daily notification shows what has changed on that task or tasks)

Would be keen to hear how other manage this process?

Cheers

Rob

 


12 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +5

We moved from Asana to IPM by Karbon and one of the things we miss is a daily digest vs what becomes slack with all the messages in Triage.

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Rob Lile there is a feature request to combine client tasks in one request into a single triage notification that sounds like it might help somewhat - 

 

You might also be interested in this feature request -

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

All of our client tasks are sent from a firm email address ‘office@ourfirm.com’ which is setup as a shared inbox with our admin team. They send and receive all standardized client communication, and the work is assigned to them until we have all the required documents. All the triage items go to the admin team until everything is ready to move to the next person.

Our accountants see their first triage notification when the work is ready for prep.

Does that make sense? I’m curious how other people handle it.

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Thanks @max 

Our current process is that the work is initially assigned to the accountant who preps which questions/information need to be requested from the client. So it’s a custom list and not a generic one (we tend to get much lower response rates from generic lists).

Then I take over and set up the Client Request section in the work and send the email. (without the work being reassigned to me). That’s where we’re both getting the triage notifications and for every client task.

Perhaps it would be better for accountant to assign the work to me and then i assign back once the 

We’ve been trying not to reassign work from person to person as we’re currently unsure what impact this has on the metrics available in Insights? (I haven’t really delved into that aspect yet - only 6 months into the role!)

I like the idea of client requests coming from an office@ address and will look into that. Is this set up as a separate colleague in Karbon or as an alias?

Cheers
Rob

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

We’ve been trying not to reassign work from person to person as we’re currently unsure what impact this has on the metrics available in Insights? (I haven’t really delved into that aspect yet - only 6 months into the role!)

Ah, that makes sense now. I would highly recommend transferring the work to the person who is actually working. One way to make this easier is to make sure that there are only tasks for one person in a task section and then set up an automation to assign the work to staff B when staff A checks all their boxes.

Insights is designed to handle the work transferring from one assignee to the next.

Does that make sense?

I like the idea of client requests coming from an office@ address and will look into that. Is this set up as a separate colleague in Karbon or as an alias?

We set it up as a shared email in Office365 (or whatever they are calling it today), added the staff to the mailbox, had each of them select the option in outlook online to receive the shared email in their inbox (this brings it into Triage, but keeps the correct “to” metadata), and then told Karbon to set it up as an alias for each of the staff associated, they also added the email address as a “send from” option, and I asked them to set the default send from to the office@firm email address.

Incoming email to the shared inbox shows up in multiple staff triage, but it’s treated as one email entity from Karbon’s perspective, so if one person takes action on the mail, it’s visible in all the associated triages (comments, assignments, timelines, etc.) If staff A takes care of the email, staff B still needs to clear from their triage, which is not ideal, but works well. Karbon is working on adding a shared triage function, which is pretty cool.

Does that help at all?

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Hi Max, that’s great thanks. Very useful.

Yes I had been looking to adapt our workflows and have sections for each person in the flow, assigning using automators etc as you suggest. So it’s great to know that Insights can handle that. I wondered whether the last assignee would be the one getting all the credit!

We use Google for mail so I’ll check how that works - again it sounds like a great suggestion.

Appreciate your advice

Cheers

Rob

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

We use Google for mail so I’ll check how that works - again it sounds like a great suggestion.

Google does not support shared inboxes. There’s a way to make it work with Google groups, but it’s a little unorthodox: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/10375787

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

Ah, that makes sense now. I would highly recommend transferring the work to the person who is actually working. One way to make this easier is to make sure that there are only tasks for one person in a task section and then set up an automation to assign the work to staff B when staff A checks all their boxes.

Insights is designed to handle the work transferring from one assignee to the next.

 

Hi @max 

Just picking up on this again, as I've gotten deeper into my role now …

So we have regular bi-monthly sales tax return works, the work is assigned to Staff A (repeating work), then, automator transfers to me and updates status when they have completed all their work. That’s it for Staff A until the next repeating work.  I complete the current work and mark the work completed.

When I go to insights, these works are attributed to me.

So I was keen to understand your comments

“Insights is designed to handle the work transferring from one assignee to the next.”

Can you show me how I can see the work being attributable to Staff A in Insights?

 

My thoughts are I either have to have an automator at the end of each work to assign back to Staff A and mark the work Complete. (not ideal as Staff A gets another triage notification)

Or we leave the work Assigned to Staff A through the work and just used Statuses for the work to come into Work Views that I look at regularly (i.e. if a work is at a particular status, it is my responsibility and no longer Staff A’s, but they get the ‘credit’ for the work in Insights.)

 

Would value your thoughts please.

Many thanks

Rob

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Or we leave the work Assigned to Staff A through the work and just used Statuses for the work to come into Work Views that I look at regularly (i.e. if a work is at a particular status, it is my responsibility and no longer Staff A’s, but they get the ‘credit’ for the work in Insights.)

 

@Rob Lile This is how we manage ownership. The work is assigned to the most junior person on the team, but our teams are setup so that their team lead is the Client Manager on the file, and then the controller/senior accountant on the file is the Client Owner, so that each person in the team can still see their client work in work views. Automators change the status as it moves through the process.

We did put together a document listing out all the statuses and who “owns” them so it’s clear, and we’ve got swim lane diagrams for our bigger processes that has a lane for each role, and then a flow chart of the work showing the status for each stage and who owns it to visually show as well.

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

many thanks @Rebecca Williams 

Hi all, sorry to flog a dead horse, but just so I’m clear, there is no “out of the box” way to turn off the notifications for each individual client task in our monthly work piece. Is that correct?

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@Chris Guy you can change reminder settings for each client task during sending, including choosing no reminders. Same options are shown for tasks which are set to send later.

I believe you can also set this up at the template level so it has a default for any new work created, but you can’t bulk change reminder settings for multiple checklists.

 

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