Problems with Emarketing and Smart Tasks

[Wendy O]

I seem to be having a lot of problems getting my smart tasks to run properly (if at all).  I have them set to send when I enter a date in a particular field. Sometimes they send, mostly they don't, or they go to people whose date field was filled long ago. I have set them to go 'on or after' 'today'.  I have run repeated tests but most often nothing happens. It has also sent templates I didn't ask it to. The whole process is very frustrating.

[Gary W]

Hi Wendy,

I have a few questions and suggestions:

1. What version of Act! are you using?
   • There is currently a known issue with Act! v19 under investigation which affects the "Today" search value in certain timezones, and causes it to return incorrect results.
   • You can confirm if you are experiencing this issue by entering today's date in a date field on a Contact record, then right-clicking it and selecting Lookup, then selecting "Equal to (=)" and "Today" from the dropdowns. If the contact you just edited isn't in the returned contact list, or the lookup returns no results, then the issue is affecting you, and is likely the reason why the smart tasks aren't running correctly.
2. What type of trigger have you set your Smart Task up with?
   • I would suggest you use "Run at scheduled time" > Daily > Every 1 day, and choose a suitable time to send the email.
3. Ensure you select "Today" from the dropdown in the conditions Value column, and not by typing it into the field.
4. Do you only have the single condition, If not, what others do you have?
5. Have you selected "Run only once for any record"?

[Wendy O]

Looks like #1 is my problem. I did what you said and it returned no results. What can we do about this?

We have workshops that we run every few months and have a schedule of emails we send every so often between when they register and when the workshop is held. We need it to trigger when I first enter the date of the workshop when they register in order for it to work properly.  Do you have any suggestions?

I have selected 'run only once', I always choose from the drop down as opposed to typing in, and only have the one condition to start things off.

[Gary W]

Hi Wendy,

The issue is one that we are aiming to fix in a future update. For reference, it has been logged as defect D-05665.

There is a workaround for the issue, as the issue only affects Date fields, and not Date/Time fields. I'll summarize the workaround steps below:

1. Create a new field with data type "Date/Time" to use as the field where the date is recorded
2. Lookup all your contacts
3. Using Edit > Copy Field, copy the contents of the Date field into the Date/Time field
4. Edit your layout to include the Date/Time field, and remove the Date field
5. Edit your smart tasks to use the new Date/Time field instead

Run the lookup test I posted above again to see if contacts are now returned in the lookup

[Wendy O]

Just to be sure I checked to see what version we are running and it's Act! Pro Version 18.2.53.0, Update 2. Is this a problem with this version as well? I don't want to spend all sorts of time re-configuring things if it's not the right fix for my problem.

[Gary W]

Hi Wendy,

It's very likely that the same defect was present in Act v18.2.

You can test if the workaround will also resolve the issue in your version by creating a Date/Time field and adding it to the layout, saving today's date in it, then right-click > Lookup on it like you did after my first post.

[Wendy O]

Thanks, Gary. I will do it and let you know!