Managing projects is hard enough without manually emailing updates every time a task is completed or hits a deadline. That’s why using ClickUp’s email automation feature can be a game changer for project managers, developers, and teams.
In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how to set up an email automation in ClickUp, helping you ensure that everyone - whether it's a team member or a client - stays in the loop with minimal effort on your part.
The Problem
Manual email notifications are prone to delays, especially when juggling multiple tasks. ClickUp’s built-in notifications work great, but sometimes you need a customized email to override individual preferences and ensure nothing gets missed.
The Solution
By setting up email automation, you can send specific emails on task due dates, milestone completions, or status changes, making sure that key stakeholders are informed at critical times.
Step 1: Enable ClickUp’s Email Integration
First, head to your Workspace settings and make sure the Email ClickApp is activated. This allows you to send emails directly from ClickUp, whether to team members or external clients.
Step 2: Configure Task Automation Based on Due Dates
For instance, you can set up an automation that triggers an email when a task marked as a milestone reaches its due date.
Step 3: Automate Emails for Task Status Changes
Another way to use this feature is to send an email every time a task’s status changes to “Done.” This can be useful for keeping clients or managers informed on project progress.
Why This Works
Automating email notifications ensures that nothing falls through the cracks, whether you’re managing multiple clients, tracking milestones, or updating your team. With ClickUp’s automation, your communication becomes both proactive and consistent, saving time and reducing manual follow-up.
Ready to streamline your communication? Start setting up email automation in ClickUp today and keep everyone on the same page, automatically. Or, have Hydrant set up your company's ClickUp for you.
Video Transcript:
00:01 Hello, I'm Jed, and I am here to walk you through how to set up an email automation using ClickUp and the specialty ClickApp.
00:10 So, we're going to go through that real quick. First, who am I? I'm Jed, I run Hydrid, our project manager has put out the fire so your team can execute with ease.
00:19 I've been a project for over 15 years, and I love using ClickUp. It's such a great tool. So, let's dive into it.
00:26 All right. First, first thing we've got to do is we've got to set up our ClickApp. So, if you don't know how to do this, uh, I'm going to go back to the workspace, and what I'm going to do first is click here, we have business account, we're going to go to apps, app center, and then I'm going to hit
00:44 communication, uhm, and then normally, oh, for whatever reason, email is not part of communication, so we're going to go to email, and then we're going to click here, and we're going to configure this.
00:59 Thank you very much for joining us. So, we already have it on, so if you go here in your workspace, you can also see it here, it's under email integration, so I'll show you how to get there really quick, but if you go here, and you go to settings, it has this left pane here, and you can go to email integration
01:18 , make sure it's on, uhm, and make sure it's on the spaces you want, and then you can set up the deferred email account.
01:27 So I'm on here, Sean's on here. I can send from this account, and then, uhm, you know, you can, you can further customize from here, so, you can even set up signatures, templates, uhm, anyway, so, that's, that's kind of a first step, so, next, once you have that going, question is, like, how are we going
01:47 to use this, and let's go to my little templates folder, and let's go into this past project, we talked about this in another video for, kind of a site plan around pre-construction, Thank you.
02:00 Or a project plan for, a project plan for a pre-construction real estate development, uhm, that's what I was trying to say.
02:10 So, the, the question here is, like, how do you want to use email, now, keep in mind, ClickUp already has all these notifications built in, uhm, and a lot of people are just like, ah, so many notifications, you can always go into notification settings, and you can, and kind of like configure, you know
02:29 , how you want it to be. And a lot of people find email notifications really overwhelming, which, which I understand, if you don't have it set up to where you're really only getting notifications on, where, you know, I like it, it's like, if you get a, if you get assigned a task, like, I kind of want
02:44 to know over email, but the thing is, individuals can set their own notifications, and I can't override them, at least I don't think, could be wrong, feel free to correct me, uhm, and sometimes you want to send an email, like, regardless.
02:59 And so you have to think about like, what makes sense there, but here's, here's an idea, uhm, which, I'm going to collapse all of these, and I'm going to add a tag, and let's see if I can get this going, uhm, let's say, on master planning and conceptual design, I'm going to add a tag that says, milestone,
03:25 and there, there's a lot of different ways you can use, like, create milestones or whatever, like. you can actually go here and set it as a milestone, uhm, you can kind of change your task type, so that's a cool new feature of ClickUp, but I'm going to do it as a tag, and I'm going to show you why, because
03:41 I'm going to set it up to where this is due on the 18th, this is a big milestone, and I'm going to set up an automation, where when this task, which has the tag is set, uh, is, uh, how do I do this, is any of milestone.
04:10 Okay, there we go. Now when a task, and I don't want task created, I actually want, uhm, due date arrives.
04:21 So, I messed that up, but I'm going to have it where tasks, and the due date arrives, tag is any of milestone.
04:31 Then, I'm going to have an email. Yes, I want to continue, and it brings up this other dialogue, this is the email integration of ClickUp, and I showed you before, we had my account and Sean's account set up, so I'm going to have it here, select, and it's going to go to an email address, and maybe this
04:54 is, uh, you know, maybe I have a few email addresses here, But I'm going to send this to Sean. I'll send it to Allie.
05:04 Sean's going to be like, what is this? Allie will get it. Sean's too busy doing work. Okay, so, and then I'm going to cc myself, because I want to see what it looks like, and I want to see when it goes out, and the subject line, I'm going to say DO TODAY, in all caps, task name.
05:29 Love that. And then I can actually create a body here, uhm, you know, maybe I'll do, like, task name, task description, and there's, you know, I can put in all these other things, like, due date, uhm, and you can, like, write out a full email, which is kind of cool.
05:51 So I like this because it's it's hey this is a big deal I want to override any existing notification setups or settings that some individual might have or maybe maybe there's a client attached to this, and I want this to, uhm, you know, go to the client.
06:08 Uhm, so if I had, you know, client at client email dot com and then maybe I'd cc my account manager and then when that due date shows up, uh, you know, it hits send.
06:26 So that's kind of one way use it. Another way to use it might be related to, a list. So I'm going to just cancel this and start fresh.
06:36 Uhm, and what I'm going to do is set up an automation. When tasks are, uh, status changes and something gets to done, so uh, or excuse me, from active or not so active.
07:03 In fact, maybe, uhm, let's see, I kind of want to clear this now. I'm going to, I'm going to start fresh again. What I want to do is I want to let a client know.
07:18 So you could use this for construction, you could use this for, for a marketing agency, whatever it is. What I want to do is every time a task gets done, I want to send an email to the client.
07:28 Okay, so they just they get it in their inbox, they're going to love that. So what I'm going to do is task or subtask created, I don't want that.
07:36 What I want is status changes from any status, so that could be you're not started, you're active, whatever, goes to done.
07:44 Then I'm going to email. And also, I'm going to point this out, if you have Twilio set up and you want to send text messages, you can do it that way too.
07:56 So you can set up a webhook, like you can go deep into in this, uhm, I want to call that out, but I think right now we're talking about email, so I'm just going to set up an email.
08:08 Select, uh, oops, I didn't set done there. So when any task status changes to done, I'm going to send to client at client email dot com And I'm going to cc the account manager at account.com.
08:32 And maybe I bcc some other folks, right? I'm going to say completed task name. Love that. If I could add in body signature, et cetera, whatever I want in there.
08:47 Maybe I have more information like task description. Uh, so that's kind of cool. I can set this up. So I'm actually curious what this looks like.
08:56 I'm going to see if I can test it live. Sometimes automations run on a little delay, which if you've used, you may.
09:02 Zapier, if you used to make, if you use it, any kind of automation software, you know, sometimes it takes, it has a delay, right?
09:07 Cause it's not, um, that's a separate conversation, but I'm going to put in my email and I'm going to cc alley.
09:17 Cause I think she'll appreciate this hydrant dot us. And you know what? Oops, I'm going to actually add in Sean too, because I don't want to leave him out.
09:32 And we always are constantly sharing use cases task. And I'm going to say task completed. Cool. This is a test.
09:45 Okay. Create. So when any task gets done, it's going to send an email. So let's see. Okay. Site analysis and due diligence.
09:57 I'm calling it done. Cool. Now let's see if something pops up. Oh, we ran into a snag. We've got to reauthorize my email.
10:11 Oh, we were so close. Let me hit pause. Okay. I went in and deleted my account and then relinked it.
10:17 I'm going to hit done. Hopefully it is working again. I'm just going to put in my name here. Now this is what it's going to show up as.
10:26 Hit save. I assume that saved. And then we're going to go back to workspace. Okay. Let's go down to pre-construction, one-on-one Samson.
10:45 And this is that error message again. So I'm going to move this to on hold. Then I'm going to try it again.
10:57 Yes. Change it on. And let's see what happens. Okay. So it took a little finagling when the integration broke, I had to go back into automations and it was listed as inactive.
11:11 So I turned it on again and marked this complete and voila, task completed entitlements and approvals. So that's kind of cool.
11:20 Uh, just, it's a nice little way to let clients know, or, um, you know, you can set this up a whole variety of ways and, uh, hopefully this has been useful for you.
11:29 And, um, as you set up these kinds of automations, you figure out your individual use case. Email is just a great, especially like corporate clients, bigger clients, or, you know, any, any, you know, obviously I said before you could set up a Twilio with text messages.
11:42 So the goal here is, hey, transparency leads to, um, you know, met expectations or exceeded expectations. So, um, I really like having these kinds of auto emails set up, uh, in different kind of scenarios.
11:55 Again, uh, super great having you here. Thanks for watching. And again, I'm Jed. I live, eat, sleep, but breathe project management.
12:02 Hit me up. I'd love to hear from you in any other questions you might have around ClickUp. Thanks so much.
