TaskRay Field Trickler – TaskRay

Note: This feature is available to the following product editions:

Starter
Standard
Premium

Since TaskRay is a 100% Salesforce native application, you can easily relate TaskRay Projects, Task Groups, and Tasks to other data in Salesforce.

Example: Imagine that you have an onboarding project in TaskRay for one of your Accounts. When viewing the Account record in Salesforce, it might be helpful to have visibility into the Tasks that are in that TaskRay onboarding Project. Rather than going through every Task within the onboarding Project and associating it with the Account, you can use the Field Trickler and simply create the association at the Project level, which then automatically updates all of the Tasks accordingly.

Tip: You can get even more granular and incorporate Task Groups into the process. For example, you could have one big onboarding Project that contains Task Groups, each of which could represent a specific Account. Using the Trickler, you can then associate every Task Group and its Tasks with the necessary Account.

By default, TaskRay comes with the two most popular lookup relationships, Account and Opportunity. Additional lookup fields such as Campaigns, Contacts, or custom objects can be added if needed.

A common configuration request is the ability to allow users to select a lookup record on the Project and have that trickle down to the related Tasks (and Sub-projects). In other words, to have the the field data (e.g. Account) that you have on the Project level to also be on the Tasks within the project (e.g. to have all the tasks within a project linked to the same account). This can be done using the TaskRay Field Trickler.

TaskRay Field Trickler Default Settings [Admin]

TaskRay comes with two custom lookup relationships by default: Account and Opportunity. By default, these fields are also included in the TaskRay Field Trickler. If a user adds an Account or Opportunity on a Project it will auto-populate the Account and Opportunity fields on the related Task Groups and/or Tasks. Admins may remove these two fields from the TaskRay Field Trickler Field Set if they do not want Task Group or Task fields to auto-populate based on the project selection.

Note: In order for this to work, the Account and/or Opportunity lookup fields must be added to the Project, Task Group, and Task Field Set or Page Layout. Follow the instructions in Add Custom Fields to Projects and Tasks article. Keep in mind, for Task Groups, you will only have the ability to add the fields to the Page Layout.

How It Works

There are a few different ways to utilize the Field Trickler. This section will outline how the Field Trickler will work in different scenarios. For this purpose, we will use the example of associating the TaskRay objects with the Account object.

Example #1: Project to Task, no Task Groups used

If you want to trickle down the Account value from the Project to its Tasks, use this configuration:

Project: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout
Task: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout

Now, when you update the Account value on the Project, all of the related Tasks will automatically populate the Account field to match the Project.

Example #2: Project to Task Group to Task

If you are using Task Groups and want to trickle down the Account value from the Project to its Task Groups and Tasks, use this configuration:

Project: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout
Task Group: Add Account field to Page Layout
Task: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout

Now, when you update the Account value on the Project, all of the related Task Groups and Tasks will automatically populate the Account field to match the Project.

Example #3: Task Group to Task

If you have one big Project that contains Task Groups, each of which you want to associate with a different Account, use this configuration:

Project: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout
Task Group: Add Account field to Page Layout
Task: Add Account field to Field Set and/or Page Layout

Now, when you update the Account field on the Task Group, all of the related Tasks will automatically populate the Account field to match the Task Group. This way, even though you have one Project that holds all of the Task Groups, each one of those Task Groups (including their tasks) can be associated with a different Account. For this purpose, the Account field on the Project (if it is there) must be left blank.

Important! If the Account field is added to the Project and you enter a value into that field, the Account field on the associated Task Groups and Tasks will be updated as well, even if you have already associated the Task Groups with other Accounts.

Note: To update the Account value on the Task Group, you would need to open the Task Group record in the standard Salesforce interface. You can either use the Salesforce Global Search to find the necessary Task Group, or you can access the Task Group by clicking on its name in Task Details in TaskRay.

Add Custom Lookup Fields to Field Trickler [Admin]

If you want to update other custom lookup fields on TaskRay objects, the first step of the process would be to add the desired lookup fields to the TaskRay Project, Task Group, and/or Task objects. For this purpose, it is important to add the same field to all objects in the relationship: TaskRay Project, TaskRay Task Group, and TaskRay Task objects. The custom fields must be matching for this purpose.

For example, let's say that we want to associate our project and all of its tasks with a Contact record in Salesforce. In this case, we will need to create a Contact lookup field on the TaskRay Project object and we will need to create a Contact lookup field on the TaskRay Task object.

Important! The Field Name for your matching lookup fields MUST be identical.

To add the matching lookup fields, follow the Integrate TaskRay with Salesforce Objects instructions. Follow the instructions to create the lookup fields, as well as to add the lookup fields to the Project, Task Group, and Task field sets/page layouts.

Modify the TaskRay Field Trickler Field Set

Now that the matching lookup fields have been added to the TaskRay objects, the next step is to add that lookup field to the TaskRay Field Trickler Field Set. Using our Contact field example from above, adding the Contact field to the TaskRay Field Trickler Field Set will make the Contact value from the Project trickle down to the Project's Task Groups and Tasks.

From Setup, navigate to:
1. Lightning: Objects and Fields | Object Manager.
2. Classic: Create | Objects.
Select TaskRay Project.
Scroll down to the Field Sets section and click Edit next to TaskRay Field Trickler Field Set.
From the container across the top, drag the desired field (in our case, Contact) that you want to map down from Projects to Tasks, into the In the Field Set container.
Click Save.

Test It Out

Let's see how this works using our Contact example. As we add a value to the Contact field in the Project Details in TaskRay...

Project Details

...that same value is automatically trickled down to all of the sub-projects and tasks within that project.

Task Details