Setting Up Task Notifications for Steps in a Workflow (Admin)

Modified on Fri, 21 Jun at 2:17 PM

When tasks are associated with steps in a matter workflow, you can set up notifications that can sent or displayed when that step is started or completed. These notifications can alert the related participants of what was completed, what's needed, or what the next steps are.

If you've created tasks and associated them with steps in your matter type's workflow, you can control how notifications are displayed for them.

Before you begin:

Set up your matter workflow. See Introduction to Workflows for help and additional links.
Create tasks and associate them with steps in the workflow. See Edit Workflow Step Screen - Tasks for help.
If you want to send email notifications, make sure your email templates are created. See Creating Email Templates for help.

To set up workflow task notifications:

In Actionstep, go to Admin > Matter Types.
Click Settings for the matter type you want set up task notifications for. The page for that matter type appears.
Click Manage in the Workflow section. The Workflow page appears.
In the list of workflow steps on the right side of the page, click the step you want to include notifications for. The Edit Workflow Step window appears.
In the Step actions section, make sure Tasks is toggled to on.
In the Tasks section, click No notification (if the task does not currently have a notification assigned to it) or N notifications (if there is already a notification assigned). The Auto-Assigned Task Notification window appears.
Click Add notification. The New Default Task Notification window appears.
Complete the following sections on this window:
- General: The general section allows the selection of a matter party to whom the task notification is assigned. This dictates which user will receive the notification. *Note: Select a role that contains a user on the matter, so they can see system popups and receive emails.
- On task created: This section allows either an E-mail or Popup notification to be created when the task is created. As soon as the task is generated on the matter, the notification is sent.
- On task completed: This section allows either an E-mail or Popup notification to be created when the task is completed. As soon as the task is completed for the matter, the notification is sent.
- On task changed from completed: This section allows either an E-mail or Popup notification to be created when the task status is moved from complete to incomplete.
- On task due date: This section allows you to send a notification on the due date of the task. An offset can be designated to send before the task due date. For example, the offset can be one hour to receive a notification one hour before the task due date.
Click Save to save your changes.

NOTE: When you select to use an email notification, you must select an Email template that will be used for the notification.

Examples of how / when you could use this feature:
- Use this feature when you want to notify a lawyer that trust funds have been received and they can start work. For example, your trust account administrator/paralegal or accounts person (and not a lawyer) may receipt funds only. On the engagement step, you could assign a task for the paralegal or accounts person to receipt trust funds when received. When this task is marked as complete, an email is auto-generated and sent to the lawyer letting them know the amount of trust funds received and that they can begin work.

- If trust funds haven't been received by the task due date, you could auto-generate an email to be sent to the client stating that their trust funds have not yet been received and work cannot be started until receipt.

- If there's a due date assigned to a client engagement letter, you could send a reminder to the client if they haven't completed it.

- You send an auto-generated email to a client at the end of a transaction, letting them know you have updated their matter details in the system as well as remind them of upcoming tasks.