Notification rules

Tool

Notification Rules

Description

A notification rule is an immediate email notification sent to one or more users when something important happens to one or more database records, as defined in the notification rule's settings. They provide an excellent way of ensuring that the appropriate people in a workflow process always receive immediate notice when a record is ready for the next step in a process.

Notes

What triggers a notification rule:

• Any change to data made from TrackVia's user interface, including edits to a record on the record page
• Using click-to-change on a value in a view or search results
• Using batch update to change one or more records at once
• Importing data from Excel to create and/or update records
• A record is created or updated by: web form, email collecting, or by API integration with another system

What does NOT trigger a notification rule:

• A record is updated solely as the result of TrackVia's relational data consistency mechanisms
  • When TrackVia updates a child record because a parent record changed
• The passage of time
  • No notification rule will be triggered without a record having been edited and saved with at least one changed value.
  • For example, if you have a date field named Next Followup Date and a filtered view that's filtered to show all records due for followup [today] you will not receive an email notification when a record joins the view because its next followup date is now equal to today.
  • Please use a Distribution Schedule to receive scheduled email notifications of records that currently meet a view's filters.

Account Admins can create and configure a notification rule in the following ways.

Manage notification rules

From this page, you can delete or unsubscribe from notification rules, edit notification rules (unless you're a normal user and the notification rule was created by an account administrator), and view the notification rule's details. There is also a built-in view called Records you have notification rules for that you can run from the Views List. It will show you all records that have record-based notification rules that you're a recipient of. You can use the checkboxes next to each notification rule in this view to remove all notification rules on these records, or a subset of them. Finally, the Views List will display an (A) after any view that has a notification rule you're a recipient of.

Suppress notification rules

Only one notification is sent to each recipient for each action taken in TrackVia, even if the action changed multiple records and would trigger multiple notification rules. For example, suppose you select 10 records at once using the checkboxes next to each record in a set of search results. You click Continue and change the value of a field for all 10 records. Furthermore, suppose you have 5 different views that contain those records and also contain view-based notification rules. Rather than send you 50 email notifications, TrackVia will just send you just one. The email will list the 10 records that were changed in your single action. The email will also contain a link to the Manage notification rules page, which will then highlight the 5 specific notification rules (among your dozens of notification rules) that triggered the email. Another type of suppression TrackVia offers is to not send a notification to the person making the change. This is the default behavior, but may be changed when a notification rule is added or edited (it's an option near the bottom of the Edit notification rule page).

Advanced options

If you click more options on the Edit notification rules page, you'll see three advanced options:

• Custom subject
  If you leave this blank, TrackVia will attempt to create a reasonably descriptive subject for the notification email, something like "Changed record: John Doe." However, you can change this to any message you like, for example, "Please call this prospect!" You can also incorporate into the subject actual data from the record that was changed, using placeholders for different fields in the record. For example, your custom subject could be ~customer name~ has changed (~status~) In this case, the Customer Name and Status fields from the changed record will be substituted into the email subject, making it John Doe has changed (in progress).
• Include record details
  This is the default behavior, and will cause a copy of the record details, including the History section, to be included in the body of the email. If your table contains data that shouldn't be transmitted in an unencrypted email (for example, medical patient data), you can turn this off.
• Include a calendar attachment
  This option only makes sense if your table contains appointments, events, or other scheduled items that you want added to Microsoft Outlook or similar calendar software. Enabling this option causes a vCalendar (iCalendar) attachment to be included in the notification email. The attachment will contain an appointment (or event) for each record that was changed; double-clicking or right-clicking on the attachment should add or update the items in your calendar software (details vary; contact TrackVia Support for assistance). The date of each calendar entry will be taken from the first date or date and time field in your table. So, for example, if your table contains patient appointments, the first date field in your table should be something like Appointment Date, not Date of Birth. Note that the calendar entries do not have reminders defined in them.

Because of the notification rule suppression feature described above, a single notification might have come from different individual notification rules with conflicting options. TrackVia will resolve these conflicts as follows. First, the custom subjects will be combined, with [other subjects omitted] added if there isn't space for all of them. Second, if any of the notification rules that triggered the email require that the record details be included, they will be. Finally, if any of the notification rules that triggered the email require that a calendar be attached, it will be.

Notification rules and Permissions

Like the rest of TrackVia's features, the notification rules feature adheres to permissions you have set up for normal users. This means:

• A normal user will never receive a notification for a record they don't have permission to view.
• A normal user will not receivea notification if the only change to a record is to fields the normal user can't view.
• The email version of the record, and the History section, will not include information about any fields the normal user can't view.

Because of these permission constraints, different users might receive different notification emails from the same action. For example, the email might differ in the list of records that changed. In addition, normal users cannot change notification rules created by administrators. They also cannot add other recipients to notification rules they create, nor see the other recipients that might exist on notification rules they're subscribed to. They can, however, remove themselves as a recipient from any notification rule, even those created by administrators.