How Does "Remind teammates about incomplete tasks when scheduled (recurring)" Template Work?

[Michael Spalluzzi]

Im looking to create an automation that sends a single email reminder about all incomplete tasks within a Confluence space.

The "Remind teammates about incomplete tasks when scheduled (recurring)" in the automation page sounds like it should do this but it is also different than the youtube video that seems to do the same task:
How to automate Confluence task reminders

Could a somewhat detailed step-by-step explanation of what the branches and components do be provided? I think the triggers, compares, and then components make sense for the most part but having trouble understanding how branches work and how the two branches in this template relate to each other.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Michael Spalluzzi 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

The template provides you with two options from which to choose.

The first branch is structured to execute an action for each incomplete Task. Here you would an an action to send an email for each such task.

In this template they did not explicitly add the actions to take per task. That would normally be to send an email to the task assignee. In this branch, an assignee would get one email per task.

The second branch is structured so that tasks are group by their Assignee, and the actions are taken per Assignee rather than per Task.

If you have tasks that have no assignee, then you will end up with a group with no Assignee value, in addition to the groups of tasks per assignee. So the template includes in this branch a condition to check that the first task in the group does have an actual assignee. If it does, then the rule proceeds to send the assignee one email listing all the incomplete tasks that are assigned to them. This branch loops over each task group (grouped by Assignee) sending the assignee one email listing all the tasks assigned to them

The video you referenced is 2 years old. The video basically covers the first branch capability. It would appear that in the interim since the video was created capabilities have changed a little bit, the new feature to use the {{tasksPerAssignee}} smart value has become available, and the template rule has been updated.

[Michael Spalluzzi]

@Trudy Claspill Ah i see. Thank you! I didnt realize the two branches were two options of how you want the reminders to be organized. The if condition second value was also confusing me but makes sense now.

Thank you again! And sounds like branch #2 is what I was looking for.