Currently, Rocketlane does not provide a native field for Last comment date or Last customer activity date for tasks in reporting views. If there's a need to monitor stale tasks (like investigations or action items that haven't been updated recently), you can achieve this by creating a custom Date field and implementing an automation that updates the field whenever a comment or message is made.

This article details the setup for the field and automation, allowing for the filtering of stale tasks in task views, dashboards, and custom reports.

When to Use

Employ this method when you need to:

• Identify tasks without recent comments (such as inactive investigations)
• Create a report for tasks lacking activity over the last 7, 14, or 30 days
• Sort and filter tasks using a searchable “ customer last activity” date
• Monitor activity based on comments or messages without depending on non-reportable system metadata

How It Works

This configuration utilizes:

• A custom task field (for example Last comment Date) that can be utilized in filters and reports
• An automation triggered by events that updates that field with today's date whenever a new message or comment is added to a task

Once set up:

• Tasks with recent activity (ie, due to comments) will have a current Last comment Date
• Tasks without recent comments will keep an older date (or remain blank if they haven't been updated since the automation was activated)

Prerequisites

• Permissions to access Settings for creating custom fields
• Permissions to access Automations for creating and enabling an automation
• A task comment or message trigger available in the automation builder

Step 1: Create a Custom Date Field on Tasks

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Open Custom Fields.
3. Select the Tasks object.
4. Click Add Field.
5. Choose Date as the field type.
6. Label the field Customer Last Comment Date(or another descriptive name).
7. Hit Save.

This field is now accessible on tasks and can be utilized in views and reporting.

Step 2: Create an Automation to Update the Field on Task Comments

1. Access Automations (or go to Settings → Automations).
2. Click Create Automation (or New Automation).
3. Set the trigger and action as detailed below.
4. Click Save, then activate the automation.

Trigger

Define the trigger for the event that occurs whenever a comment or message is added to a task.

• Trigger: When a new message/comment is added to a task

This should activate whenever someone posts a message in the task's chat feed.

Action

Specify the action to update the custom date field.

• Action: Update task fields
• Field to update: Last Comment Date
• Update value: Today (the current date at the time of automation execution)

Optional: Add conditions

Incorporate conditions to narrow the automation's scope if needed, such as:

• Only for tasks in specific projects
• Only for tasks with specific statuses
• Only for certain task types (investigations, escalations, action items)

Once the automation is activated, the Last Comment Date field can be utilized throughout Rocketlane just like any standard Date field.