Tips & Tricks: Collaboration Connect

In case you missed it, TaskRay’s March 2022 Release included new and enhanced features for external collaboration. This installment of Tips & Tricks focuses on the brand new Collaboration Connect feature. This is a revolutionary feature for TaskRay that changes the way you involve external stakeholders throughout your project lifecycle. You can create more accountability with your external contacts by assigning tasks and alerting them via email. The email shows a full list of their to-do’s, allows them to mark tasks complete or click a link to view a task on the dashboard within the email, and enables communication with the internal owner through email replies.

Previously, the only way to directly involve an external stakeholder (like a client or partner) in the project and allow them to indicate work they completed was to invest in a Salesforce community, which requires Salesforce and TaskRay community licenses. This can be a significant investment and not all customers are ready for it. Collaboration Connect provides a middle-ground option for those who need more external collaboration capabilities but do not require everything these communities provide.

Note: This feature is part of our Public Collaboration Licenses that are provided to all of our Standard and Premium Editions in order for you to take full advantage.

Getting Started with Collaboration Connect

1. 1.Site Configuration: Go through steps 1 and 2 in the referenced article to ensure all necessary site settings are set up correctly to host the site that allows your external stakeholders to complete tasks.
2. 2.Run the Utility: Use the provided utility to configure the rest of the settings for this feature. This utility assigns the necessary license and permission set, and creates sharing rules on the backend to grant the site access to TaskRay objects. You can also add custom branding to the notification email sent to the external owner’s email, making notifications appear as if they come from your organization.
3. 3.Edit Task Page Layout: Edit the TaskRay Task page layout to include fields related to external owners. To assign someone to a task, fill out their name and email address. Then, enable the "External Owner Notification Enabled" checkbox to send them a notification.

You can update individual tasks or use Spreadsheet view to assign multiple tasks to the same person. Bulk updating sends one email with all assigned tasks instead of one email per task, reducing email clutter.

Email Notification Variations

The email notifications may vary depending on which features are configured in your organization:

• ​If only notifications are set up (without completion flow or Collaboration View), the user receives a basic notification.
• ​With notification and completion flow enabled (but not Collaboration View), the user can mark tasks complete.
• ​With all features enabled, more aspects of the notification are hyperlinked, allowing users to complete or view tasks within Collaboration View.

External Stakeholder Experience

When an external stakeholder receives the email and marks a task as complete, their part of the process is done. This action checks the ‘External Owner Complete’ box. By default, the task is not officially considered complete (via the “Complete” checkbox or “List” status) to allow internal users to review before finalizing. However, you can customize the flow to change this behavior. You can also set up Salesforce automation to notify the task owner when the “External Owner Complete” checkbox is checked.

Attachments

If external stakeholders need to provide attachments as part of completing a task, they can reply directly to the notification email with the attachment included. The attachment will go back to the internal task owner, who can then add it to the task or project Files tab.

This feature opens up many collaboration options with clients or prospects. For more information about Collaboration Connect, you can join the Feature Focus webinar or reach out to your Customer Success Manager or success@taskray.com with any questions.

Stay tuned for the second part of the Tips & Tricks series, which will outline Collaboration View.