Is it possible to send a custom email notification based on an external dependency addition?

[Jose Oprin Jr_]

Hi Community, 

New to SPM here. Just wondering if anybody have implemented a solution for sending a custom email notification to the Assigned to's of the Projects involved when an external dependency is added in the Planning Console? 

From what I understood, every time an external dependency is created, shadow tasks were created as well. The first approach I have in mind is to trigger the email notif. via event whenever there is an inserted project task with Shadow = true value. However, after debugging, it seems that the current value that the system recognizes is not the Shadow Task, but the original task in which it was made dependent on.

For example, assuming there's Project A and Project B, the abovementioned approach is to get the value of the assigned to of Project A. But how do I know when to trigger the notif to know that there's an external dependency created if it is only accessing the originating value? Additionally, since the dependency value is not returning anything, I'm not sure how to access the value of the fields in Project B. 

Looking forward for any thoughts / ideas regarding this. Thanks in advance!

[Mark Manders]

Check here for a better understanding of the concept: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/washingtondc-it-business-management/page/product/project-manageme...

Use Flow Designer to be triggered on creating the shadow task and to get the correct information, using the relationships between them. You can then use the 'send notification' action to trigger your notification to the correct user.

[Chris Everding]

Another method you can use is the table that stores the relationships between tasks. The table is planned_task_rel_planned_task and you can retrieve the external dependencies by filtering on External Relation = true. This gives you the tasks in both project A and B, you can then fairly easily navigate to the top project/parent from there.