I observed some unexpected notifications from updates made to a custom field within a portfolio. The portfolio owner updated a custom field for about a dozen projects and they each created a separate notification. The notification did not reference the portfolio, only the project, which was confusing for folks. Also, not ideal was the custom field was named “priority” which caused some angst across teams when they saw the change.
I think I understand why it might be important to send such a notification as such a custom field is assigned at the project level, so the change would be reflected in any portfolios and people would need to know that change happened. But I can’t find documentation on this and raises a few questions.
Who exactly gets the notification when a field value is changed in a portfolio - people who have the project in portfolios they mange and/or follow, or members of the project, or both? That kind of update doesn’t seem to match the usual “status updates” “messages” or “work/tasks added” notification options.
Is there a way for a portfolio to have more of a local field that doesn’t trigger updates to so many people? For example, like in this case, a Training team may want to use a (better named) custom field to designate a priority to complete for their team, but not notify others when something is reprioritized for their team only.
Hi @Scott_Clark , I’ve also noticed this lately and not sure whether this is the new norm or perhaps an A/B test, but I’ve realised these notifications get triggered for custom fields that have been set to ‘Notify collaborators when field value is changed’ (in the field’s Edit menu).
So if such a field is added in a portfolio, the ‘collabortors’ are regarded as the project’s members. And just like at the task level, it is NOT possible for each person to enable/disable such notifications when a field value changes for a task, the same applies for Projects and their fields on a Portfolio .
To overcome this problem, in your case you could disable the ‘Notify collaborators…’ but this would also apply for tasks in projects as well.
If you want this only to be disabled for Projects in Portfolios, then as you mention in point 2, you would have to create a dedicated ‘local’ Priority field for your portfolio, or it could be in the library but called something different, such as ‘Project priority’, where the ‘Notify collaborators…’ would be disabled for that field.
I haven’t personally tested this after your post, but I’d be surprised if a notification is generated when “Notify collaborators…” for the field is toggled off, but if you find that to be the case, reply here and we can ask Forum Team if there’s an A/B test running or a recent change.
The level of notification (at the project, not portfolio, level) makes sense to me when you consider the case of task-level custom fields defined in projects: It’s the tasks that are the object of the notifications, not the project.
Thanks @Richard_Sather and @lpb. You were correct. I overlooked the edit custom field option to turn off notifications. I expect that should resolve the issue.
Cheers!
Scott
