The function of an Alert is to send an email notification to relevant people to Alert them of an action or milestone that is about to take place, such as a Contract Renewal.


When an Alert is created the system assumes that you wish to send an email notification out to the recipients.  The system will send out these notification emails and will keep sending you reminders for them until you Complete or Snooze the Alert.

Note: Some Accounts may have the Alert name set to 'Reminder'. This is just the old name for Alerts.

You can control the behaviour of a Alert using the 'Manage Account Configuration' options in the Configuration area.


Fig 1 - Alert Configurations


  • Hour of the day daily notifications should be sent - This is the hour of the day that any email notification is sent out of the system. You may wish all your Alerts to be sent in the evening or early morning (this is a 24 hour value).
  • Reminder Frequency - This is the delay length of when you wish Alert notification emails to be resent out if they have not been Completed or Snoozed. The default is 7 days.
  • Allow users to schedule recurring Reminder based upon completion date - If set to 'Yes', recurring Alert dates can be decided by the User rather than the system automatically using the set defaults.
  • Send a single 'Digest' reminder email per person per day? - This collates all Alert emails into a single email with multiple Alerts included in the body of the email, rather than receiving separate emails. The default is 'Yes'.


Pinned Alerts

Alerts can be 'pinned' to a specific Date field on the form that you have open. In the case of a Contract form, you can also pin Alerts to any date that is displayed in the Term field.


Alerts can be pinned to any date field that you have on your form - these can be custom date fields that you have created.


All the available date fields will be displayed in the Relative date field drop down list in the Alert record.


If you have selected a field that does not contain any date values, the system will give an error when you try to save the Alert form.


Fig 2 - Relative Date selection


Triggers (Alert Date Setting)

When an Alert reaches its trigger date (Alert date Setting value), it will fire, and an email notification will be sent out to the relevant people and the date value will change to red on the record.  


You can change the trigger date of an Alert right up until the point that the Alert notification is sent out. Once the trigger date has passed, the record is locked for update and you will only be able to 'Complete' or 'Snooze' the record.


If you ignore this email notification then the system will automatically send another notification reminding you that the Alert has not yet been completed. The delay in which this Alert email notification is sent out is found in the 'Reminder Frequency' option in the Configuration screen.


If this values is set to 7 days for example, if you receive an Alert email notification and do not 'Complete' or 'Snooze' it, then the system will send you an automatic reminder email again in 7 days.


None Triggered Alerts 


  • If you have an Alert pinned to a date and it has not triggered, if the pinned date is updated then the Alert will update with the new date when refreshed.


Triggered Alerts

  • The Alert must be marked as 'Complete' to stop the email notifications from continuing.  
  • The Alert record is locked and cannot be edited only 'Completed' or 'Snoozed'
  • If the Alert is pinned to a date, if the pinned date is updated then the existing Alert will NOT update. It must either be completed or deleted, and a new Alert created which will take the new updated date.


Snoozing

If you do not wish to deal with the Alert at that moment, you can Snooze it. This Snooze overwrites the Reminder Frequency option.


Snooze delays are set to 3 days by default, but can be adjusted in your profile settings, which can be accessed on the top right corner clicking on the profile icon.


Navigate to: Profile => My Setting = > Settings => Snooze Length (Days)


Fig 3 - Snooze Settings


If you Snooze an Alert using the above value then the Alert email notification will trigger again in 3 days ignoring the 7 day account default.  If you ignore this notification then the Alert email notification will go back to the account default and trigger again in 7 days.


  • Day 1 - Alert received and ignored
  • 7 Days later - Alert email notification is sent out again
  • Alert is Snoozed
  • 3 days later - Alert email notification sent out again
  • Notification is ignored
  • 7 Days later - Alert email notification  is sent out again


This cycle will continue until you eventually 'Complete' the Alert or delete it.


Recurring Alerts

When you create an Alert then you can set a Recur option.  This means that when the original Alert is set to 'Complete' the system will automatically create a new Alert record based upon these values.  this means that you do not have to keep manually creating new Alerts when the previous one is completed.


The below example, the initial Alert is set to 01-Jan-2022 with a Recur option of 'Annual' until the Contract [Term] End Date.

 

Fig 4 - Recur Rule


This Alert will trigger on 01-Jan-2022. When it is 'Completed', the system will automatically create a new Alert record to trigger 01-Jan-2023 and will continue to do so each time the next Alert is completed until it reaches the Contracts End Date.


If you have the Setting 'Allow users to schedule recurring Reminder based upon completion date' set to 'Yes' in the Configuration area, then you will receive this pop up message when you complete the Alert:


Fig 5 - Recurring Alert creation


This option allows the User to select what the next Alert date should be set to, so if you have a recurring Alert to trigger on 22-May-2021 and then on Annually, and you leave it for a while, if you then try to complete it the system will ask you if you want the next Alert to have its date set 12 months from the last Alert date. So it will be set to 22-May-2022, or 12 months from 'today' (so it will be set to 16-Jun-2022).


If you do not have this setting set to 'Yes', then the system will automatically create the next Alert from the last Alert date.


If you create an Alert based upon a Term date field, then in some circumstances the system will automatically set a Recur rule. In the below case, the Alert is based upon the Renewal date, so the system will automatically take the renewal information and create this renewal Alert each time the renewal happens.


Fig 6 - Term Recur default


Standard and Pinned Alerts with Past Dates

If you create an Alert and knowingly set it to a date that is in the past, the system will create this Alert but it will not trigger an email notification.  

  • The Alert will be created with the data in red and the record will be locked, as the system thinks that it has already triggered
  • The system will wait for the 'Reminder Frequency' time to pass and then send a reminder email notification and continue doing so until the Alert is completed or deleted
  • If you change the pinned date to another, the existing Alert WILL NOT update
  • You will need to either Complete or Delete the Alert, and then create a new Alert which will take on the updated date


Alerts with Past Dates and Recur Rules

If you have an Alert that has a date the past, and it has a Recur rule set to it, when it is set to 'Complete' the system will assume that you want to create an Alert that can have the email notification triggered, so it will ALWAYS create the next Alert using the next available future date.


For example, if you have an Alert to trigger 01-Jan-2021 set to Recur Weekly you should have a flow like this:


  • 1st Alert 01-Jan-2021 - completed
  • 2nd Alert: 08-Jan-2021 - completed
  • 3rd Alert: 15-Jan-2021, etc.


However, if this is an old Alert and you 'Complete' after the next Recur has already gone then it will create the next Alert for the next available date which will be 7 days after, so if the date today is 20-Jan-2021 you should have a flow like this:


  • 1st Alert 01-Jan-2021 - completed 20-Jan-2021
  • 2nd Alert: 27-Jan-2021


The system will always assume that you need to have an email notification email triggered so it will always set the next Recurrence of this alert using the next available date.

Alert Notification Bounces


If for any reason an email notification is bounced the 'Communication Enabled' tick box against the Person record is automatically set to 'No' to prevent any further bounces - this must be set back to 'Yes' once the bounce issue has been resolved so they can continue to receive intelligentcontract email notifications.