Configuring event notifications

Event notification messages are initiated by the Meridian application server and sent by a specified email server. These notifications are those that your organization should consider as mandatory for users to receive. The users cannot configure which messages they receive and they may not decline to receive them. As such, these messages should be the minimum that are necessary for your business processes. Additional messages can be sent by user-configured subscriptions or reminders as described elsewhere or by programming custom notifications.

You configure event notifications by specifying which groups of users should receive notifications when specific events occur in the vault. By default, Meridian provides notification definitions for the common events that require notifications:

• Document workflow and redline events

  Note    To disable notification for specific transitions of a workflow definition, see Creating and editing transitions.

• Project workflow events
• Project copy events (Managed Change and Meridian Advanced Project Workflow Module)
• Work area events

These definitions cannot be deleted. Additional definitions can be created for custom requirements and the definitions used in VBScript programming.

Each notification definition can send messages to the users of any of the groups described in About email notifications.

Subscription notifications use the same definitions as event notifications except that the recipients must register their subscriptions to documents manually (opt-in) in order to receive the notification messages. In addition, each definition must be enabled for the Subscribers group as described in the following tasks.

Notes

• Configuring the notification definitions does not configure how subscriptions are stored or how the messages are actually sent. That must be done by creating the notifications table and configuring the table connection and SMTP mail server options as described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Administrator’s Guide. Configuring the table connection enables all three types of email messages: event notifications, document subscriptions, and reminders.
• To subscribe to documents for themselves or for others, users must have the Allow Subscriptions or Allow Management of Subscriptions for others privileges, respectively, that are described in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Administrator’s Guide.
• Notifications are not sent when documents are released using VBScript (for example, Document.ChangeWorkflowState AS_WF_RELEASED, "", "") if the SDWFEvents setting is set to N (default). If such script exists in the vault configuration and the document type workflow events must be prevented, then you must provide custom notification scripting. If the document type workflow events do not need to be prevented, set SDWFEvents to Y. The setting can be found in the [ScriptEvents] section of the Application Integration tab in the Environment branch of the configuration tree in Configurator. For more information about limiting the events generated by VBScript, see the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise VBScript API Reference.

To configure event notifications:

1. In Configurator, expand Environment in the configuration tree and select Notification Settings. The Notification Settings page appears in the right pane. The page lists the existing notification definitions for the current vault.

2. Click Edit. The page becomes editable.
3. For each definition in the list that you want to configure, double-click its row or select the row and click Edit. The definition’s Properties dialog box appears.
4. For each tab in the dialog that represents a group of recipients, click options or type values using the descriptions in the following table.

5. Click OK to save your changes to the definition.
6. You may also select checkboxes in the To-Do Persons, Managers, and Subscribers columns of the definitions list that correspond to the users that you want to receive notifications when the event occurs.
7. Click OK to save your changes to the notification settings.

To create a notification definition:

1. In Configurator, expand Environment in the configuration tree and select Notification Settings. The Notification Settings page appears in the right pane.
2. Click Edit. The page becomes editable.
3. Click New. A new row is added to the definition list and its name is editable.
4. Type a descriptive name for the definition and press Type.
5. Double-click the definition row or select the row and click Edit. The definition’s Properties dialog box appears.
6. For each tab in the dialog that represents a group of recipients, select or type options using the descriptions in the preceding table.
7. Click OK to save your changes.
8. You may also select checkboxes in the To-Do Persons, Managers, and Subscribers columns of the definitions list that correspond to the users that you want to receive notifications when a VBScript procedure initiates notifications using this definition.
9. Click OK to save your changes to the notification settings.
10. Specify the definition name in a VBScript procedure that executes when the event occurs. For more information about sending custom notifications using a notification definition, see the Vault.SendNotification, Document.Subscribe, and Document.Unsubscribe methods in the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise VBScript API Reference.

To edit a notification definition:

1. In Configurator, expand Environment in the configuration tree and select Notification Settings. The Notification Settings page appears in the right pane.
2. Click Edit. The page becomes editable.
3. Double-click the definition row that you want to edit or select the row and click Edit. The definition’s Properties dialog box appears.
4. For each tab in the dialog that represents a group of recipients, select or type options using the descriptions in the preceding table.
5. Click OK to save your changes.
6. You may also select checkboxes in the To-Do Persons, Managers, and Subscribers columns of the definitions list that correspond to the users that you want to receive notifications when a VBScript procedure initiates notifications using this definition.
7. Click OK to save your changes to the notification settings.

To delete a notification definition:

1. In Configurator, expand Environment in the configuration tree and select Notification Settings. The Notification Settings page appears in the right pane. The page lists the existing notification definitions for the current vault.
2. Select the definition row that you want to delete and click Remove. The row is deleted from the definition list.
3. Click OK to save your changes.