AX1648

Customizing recipients for plan file process notifications

When defining the notifications for a plan file process definition, you can customize the recipients for each notification. You can choose specific users and roles to receive notifications, and you can select defined classes of recipients such as task owners and the process owner.

Recipient types

The following recipient types are available for plan file process notifications. Certain recipients are only available for certain notification types.

Recipient Types Description

Task Owners

The notification will be sent to the current task owners for the plan file.

This recipient type is not available for the Step Completed or Step Rejected notification types, because once the step is completed it has no current owners.

User

Select any named user defined within Axiom security to send the notification to that user. This recipient type is available for any notification.

Role

Select any named role defined within Axiom security to send the notification to all users in that role.

The role recipient is only available for Step Completed and Step Rejected notification types.

Process Owner

The notification will be sent to the process owner. If the process uses a grouping column and has assigned group owners, then the notification will also be sent to the relevant group owner for the plan file.

This recipient type is available for any notification.

Previous Step Owners

The notification will be sent to the users who completed all previous steps in the process for the plan file. This recipient type is only available for the Step Completed and Step Rejected notification types.

For more information, see Behavior of Previous Step Owners recipient type.

Process Initiator

The notification will be sent to the user who initiated the process for the plan file. This recipient type is only available for use in plan file processes for on-demand file groups, and only for Step Activated, Step Completed, and Step Rejected notification types.

In most cases, the process initiator is the same user who created the on-demand plan file, but it does not have to be. For more information, see Setting the process initiator for plan files.

Generally speaking, the Task Owners recipient type is intended to be used when you want to inform a user that they have a task to complete in the process, or to remind the user that they need to complete the task. All other recipient types are intended to inform interested users about what is currently going on with the process. For example:

  • A process owner may want to receive a notification as each step in the process is completed, to help them keep tabs on the process. Similarly, there may be a specific user or role who is also interested in receiving this information, for the entire process or perhaps for a specific step.

  • The initiator of an on-demand plan file may want to be informed of the status of their submission as it progresses through the steps of process. Similarly, the previous step owners of a plan file may want to be informed of the status of that plan file as it progresses.

When using different types of recipients for the same notification type, in most cases you should define multiple notifications with different text. The text for task owners should be action-oriented (such as "You have a new task to complete for plan file 3400"), whereas the text for interested parties is more informational ("User jdoe completed step Manager Review for plan file 3400").

Defining recipients for a notification

When you create or edit a notification at any level of the process, you can specify the recipients on the Notification Configuration tab of the Edit Process Notification dialog. The Add Recipient list only shows the recipients that are valid for the current notification type and process type.

Once the notification has been saved, you can see the list of recipients in the notifications grid:

Adding step-specific recipients to inherited notifications

When a step inherits a notification from the process level or the subprocess level, you have the option of adding recipients for that step only.

For example, imagine that you want to notify a specific user when a particular step completes. You can always choose to create a custom notification for that step and send it to that user. However, if an inherited Step Completed notification is already available to the step, then you can just add the user to that notification.

To add the user to the inherited notification, select the step and go to the Step Notifications sub-tab. Select the notification in the grid, then click Edit Recipients.

In the Edit Recipients dialog, you can see the default recipients defined for the inherited notification at the top of the dialog. You cannot remove any of these recipients, but you can add a recipient for this step only. In the following screenshot, the user Jane Doe will be included in the notification when this step is completed.

  • To add a recipient, click Add Recipient and then select the type of recipient to add. Any recipient types that are already included in the default recipients are not listed here.
  • To remove an additional recipient, select the recipient and then click Delete.

Any recipients listed in the Additional Recipients section will receive the notification for this step only.

Behavior of Previous Step Owners recipient type

The Previous Step Owners recipient type can be used to notify the previous step owners of a plan file about the status of subsequent process steps. For example, users who completed the previous steps of the process for the plan file may want to know when a certain milestone step of the process is completed, or when the final step of the process is completed. This notification type has some special behaviors depending on the particular process configuration.

For purposes of determining the users who are considered "previous step owners" for the plan file, only the users who completed previous steps qualify. Note the following:

  • Assigned step owners who did not complete a step are not included as a recipient. For example, if the owner of a step was a role with three users, only the user who actually completed the step will receive the notification.

  • If a previous step was completed by an administrator or the process owner (overriding step ownership), then that completing user will receive the notification instead of the assigned step owner.

  • If a previous step was skipped or not completed (due to a Move current step operation), then that step will not have a completing user to receive the notification.

If a process definition contains a multiple approvals step, the previous step owners are treated as follows:

  • When a sub-step of the multiple approvals step is completed, the other sub-steps are ignored for purposes of determining previous step owners. This is because the sub-steps do not have an order, so the concept of "previous" does not apply. However, the step owners of steps completed before the multiple approvals step will receive a notification.

  • When steps after the multiple approvals step are completed, the previous step owners of all sub-steps will receive a notification.