Items to Watch

• Current Record: Facilitates the Notification as it relates to a single record. You must launch this option from an open record.
• Selected Records: Facilitates the Notification based on a saved selection. The drop-down list displays all selections the current User can access for the current Page.
• View Notifications: Facilitates the Notification based on a view. The drop-down list displays all views that the current User can access for the current Page.

Deliver To

You can send Notifications to yourself or a User Group to regularly review any shortlist of records. This may help identify newly active contacts, stay on top of problems, reminder you of missing information, or review records you want to see regularly (for example, First Gift This Month or Open Care Cases).

You can send View Notifications using a Template to email people who meet a set of criteria. This may help to welcome new participants who checked in for the first time in the last week, thank donors who gave for the first time in the last month, or congratulate a participant for a new milestone assigned in the last month. Most of the time you want to use a view that looks at a dynamic date (the last seven days, last month, and more) and match your Item Notification Schedule accordingly. This ensures that you don't email the same people multiple times when the notification runs.

• My User Record: Sends to the currently authenticated User. To set up a Notification for others, you need rights to impersonate the Platform User.
• User Group Members: Sends to all members of the selected User Group. A SPoC can go to Administration > User Group to create or edit User Groups.
• Results Using Template: Delivers the selected Message (Template) to the Contact associated with each row.
  Note: This option is only available for View Notifications and only when records are clearly associated with a Contact (the Contact_ID_Field is defined on the Page).

Schedule

• Subject: The User's custom subject line included when the notification is delivered.
• Immediately (When Updated): Sends any time someone changes one of the specified records. Available for Current Record and Selected Records only.
• Using Existing Schedule: Reuse and share schedules among Notifications. The drop-down list displays all schedules the current User previously created.
• Using New Schedule: Define a new schedule to include a recurring pattern of when the notification should repeat (for example, daily, weekly, monthly).
• Send Empty Views: When selected, an email sends even if the view returns no records. When unselected, emails don't send. This is only available for View Notifications.

When an individual creates a new schedule, that new schedule is available to that individual for future Notifications. All Notifications that use the same schedule arrive in one email.

Notification Emails & Texts

In addition to configuring the recipient and schedule, you must understand the email contents delivered in each case.

• Single Record: The email displays a grid of all fields and their value.
• Selection: The email contains the first ten selected records arranged according to the page's All Records view. It also provides a link to the Selection.
• View sent to a User Record or User Group: The email contains the first ten records in the view.
  Note: The Notification email includes the first six columns of the view. It also provides a link to the view.
  • Use the Send Empty Views setting to determine whether to include views containing zero records in the Notification email.
  • All members of the User Group must have access to the view to receive the Notification.
• View sent to Results Using Template: One email or text sends to the Contact related to each row. The Message contains the Message body of the specified Template.
• Before you schedule your Results Using Template Item Notification:
  • Create your Template and set the Communication Type field to Email or SMS text.
  • Set Active to Yes.
  • If you selected SMS text, configure texting for your system using Twilio.

    

• When you schedule your Results Using Template Item Notification, select the appropriate Template from the drop-down list.
• If a Contact does not have an Email Address in the database, they will not receive a Notification sent by email.
• If a Contact does not have a Mobile Phone Number in the database, they will not receive a Notification sent by text.
• Want to use merge fields in your Template? Ensure the fields merge correctly:
  1. When you create your Template, add the Page the item Notification sends from in the Pertains to Page.
  2. You can use Contact merge fields and merge fields from the Page you identify in your Template.
  3. When you build your Notification view, include the same columns, named the same way that you used them as merge fields.

Additional Considerations

• To make a Template available for a View Notification, set Template to Yes and Active to Yes.
• If there are two Display Names in the View, open a record to determine which Contact the email will send to.
• View Notification Emails use the From and Reply To Contacts set on the Message Template. View Notification Texts use the SMS Number on the default Outbound SMS Numbers record.
• You must have one Outbound SMS Number with Default set to Yes. Otherwise, the text will not send and the system won't create a Message record, even though the User Notification record indicates that the Message sent (through the Last Execution field).