[From Wrike] Automation: Date Trigger 🔥

Hello Community! 😊

We are super excited to announce this new release from our Product team - Date Trigger in Automation Engine 🥳

This has been one of the most popular asks from our users and we’ve received feedback on this on various Community threads related to the Automation Engine, like this one. We’re therefore really happy to be able to announce this update today.

How Does the Day Trigger Work?

When account admins check out the Automation tab in the Settings section, they will now see a new trigger there called “The date in the field meets a condition”:

Note: Just like any other automation rule, this rule can be applied to tasks and projects. Also, it will only trigger for active tasks and projects.

Once you choose this trigger, you will be able to apply it to one of the three types of fields:

Start Date system field
Due Date system field
Custom field (“date” type)

After that, you’ll be able to choose one of the conditions - if the start/due/custom date has passed or is coming within X amount of time.

You will also be able to choose the time zone here.

If you chose the second option - “will be within the next…”, you would be able to specify the number of days, hours, and minutes.

After this, you can choose the action for this automation rule:

📍The most popular use case here is when you choose to send a comment or mention to remind your team about the upcoming start/due/custom date.

We are hoping that you are as excited about this new trigger as we are! 🤗

Please share your feedback and/or questions below as usual 👇

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Comments

Sarah Dungey

This is so great!

Sven Passinger

Great next step. Go on and expand the automation engine.

Florian Kislich

I was really waiting for this, thank you so much!!!

Fillipe Neyl Walecki

WOW, really useful! Does it work for cases where we want to stop the automation from completing when there's no due date on a task?

Shelly Erickson

This is great news! We have been wanting this feature! Thanks!

Meghan Sharer

Great news!

Elizaveta Bogdanova

So happy to hear you like it, everyone! 🤗

@Fillipe Neyl Walecki It doesn't work for the case you've described, but interesting idea 👍

Fillipe Neyl Walecki

@Elizaveta Bogdanova Too bad it doesn't work for what I've mentioned... Would be very useful because we have an automation for commenting on tasks that don't change status for more than 15 days but it comments on tasks that have no due date as well and this is a little annoying.

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi @Fillipe Neyl Walecki, hope you don't mind me jumping in for Lisa. Thank you for sharing your use case and feedback here. I've passed it on to the Product team responsible for Automation Engine 👍🏼

Michelle Hammond

Thank you for launching this! I am so excited to set up some automations TODAY!

Elizabeth Bayer

This is AMAZING. Thank you!

Sara Davis

This is exciting but I don't see the date option yet. When can we expect to see it?

Fillipe Neyl Walecki

Thanks @[Deleted User] :-)

David Cohen

I also don't see the date option in Automation settings.

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi everyone, at the moment the date trigger is unavailable to some users due to a bug. Our Product team is aware of this and they are working on a fix. As soon as we have an update we’ll be sharing it with you here. We hope to have this resolved shortly 👍🏼

Tuomo Suominen

The date trigger is an excellent addition to automation! In the case of "If the due date has passed", I'm missing the option to mention the Project Owner. Any chance that could be added?

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi @Tuomo Suominen, thank you for your feedback, I've passed it on to the team. For now, you can use a specific user or followers to @mention. We'll be sure to update you if there are any plans to introduce "project owners" as an option 👍🏼

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi everyone, a quick update to let you know that the Date Trigger in the Automation Engine is available again! Please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions/comments 🙋🏻‍♀️

Ashley Fischer

I agree with @Tuomo Suominen. The ability to @menion the project owner/task assignee is an important feature that is missing. My team creates many of the company projects, but once the project is built out, we hand it off to the users. The project owner or assignee would be the ones that need to be notified of a date upcoming/past, not us.

Sara Davis

I couldn't agree more with @Tuomo Suominen and @Ashley Fischer. Mentioning the project owner rather than the author seems a more intuitive and basic function that would help a lot.

Florian Kislich

For me it seems that they just forgot to include the project owner, as the task asignee can be mentioned in the same rule for tasks. It doesn't make any sense to me to exclude the project asignee here, it's just inconsistent.

Elaine McDonagh

Hi @Florian Kislich, @Sara Davis, @Ashley Fischer, thank you for taking the time to share your insights here also. We've passed these on to the team. We'll be sure to keep you posted on any updates 👍

Ella Flansburg

For projects on my team, we have an expectation that certain custom fields are updated weekly, so I was hoping to do something like "If latest update date is more than 7 days old, @mention project owner" (or, better yet, custom 'user' field because we have a specific person assigned to do updates that is not the project owner). But I see I can't do math on a date in that way.

Tried to work around this by adding a custom formula field ("Update Due" = "Latest Update" + 7d), but I see I can't use a formula-derived date as part of this automation.

Would love to see this added functionality in the future!

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi @Ella Flansburg, thank you for the detailed feedback, it's much appreciated! I've shared it with our Product team and as always if there is an update we'll be sharing it in our Weekly Release Notes 🙋🏻‍♀️

Ashley Fischer

This is a great automation option! It would be helpful if the date trigger had an option for "If the start date is today".

Another item we would like to see is the ability to have multiple trigger items. For example, we would like to be able to @mention the task assignee if the task status is X AND the scheduled Start Date is today (or will be in the next day since there is no "today" option).

We use a Scheduled status that means that the task dates are set based on the project plan build-out but the task is not ready to begin. We use a Ready to Start status once the task is ready for the assignee to begin (meaning they have all the necessary details and approvals to complete the task). If a task is still in that first Scheduled status, we don't want to @mention the task assignee because they have not yet been given what they need to complete the task.

What we would like to see is the ability to say "If the task status is Ready to Start AND the task start date is today @mention the task assignee"

Amy Shaiman

Thanks for this helpful automation. Once we create it, how long does it take before it runs and puts the comment/notification where we asked it to be? Will the automation cause the comment to appear in the person's Inbox? (For example if the comment/mention is on an overdue task.)

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi @Ashley Fischer, thank you so much for the feedback, I've passed it on to our Product team.

Hi @Amy Shaiman! It might take several minutes for the automation to trigger depending on the number of tasks you have. Automation bot will @mention the user under the task as a comment and this will appear as a notification in the inbox. Please let me know if you have any other questions 🙋🏻‍♀️

Amy Shaiman

Thanks for the reply, @[Deleted User]. Even after waiting overnight, there is nothing in my inbox to show me results of the automation that should have triggered notifications. They would appear in my inbox, correct?

Thanks,

Amy

Amy Shaiman

Update: I am now getting the automation triggers.

Cansu Yetisgin

Hello @Amy Shaiman, great to hear that, please let us know if you have any questions 🙋🏻‍♀️