E-mail Notifications

Enterprise HelpDesk can generate notifications (e-mail messages) to inform team members of changes to the project database. Notification messages are sent via the native e-mail system.

Notifications keep team members up to date with changes to reported issues. They don't have to run queries, inspect issues, and review revision histories to find out about changes. Instead, they get e-mail messages whenever new issues are assigned to them, or whenever someone edits a issue already assigned to them.

You should try to keep the number of notifications to a minimum. Defining too many notifications for field updates can overwhelm users with e-mail, resulting in users missing important notifications. Use notifications for changes to fields like Owner, Progress, and Priority.

What Can You Do With Notifications?

You can send notifications to specific users or contacts, or to the current owner, the previous owner, or the contact (the person who reported the issue).

To trigger notifications, you use simple when conditions that test for changes to an issue.

Send a notification when an issue is reassigned

When an issue is reassigned, you can use the <Owner> and <Previous Owner> to send notifications to both the new and the previous owner.

Send a notification when a field is updated

In this when condition, the Update test checks for changes to the Priority field.

Testing the Revision Number allows you to distinguish between new issues and existing issues that have had their priority changed. Without the Revision Number > 1 test, a "Priority Updated" notification would be generated every time someone set the Priority when they submitted a new issue.

Send a notification when a field is set to a certain value

You can send a notification when the priority of an issue is changed to “ASAP”. To do this, you use a when condition that looks like this:

This when condition sends a notification when Priority is changed to ASAP. Without the Update test, it would send a notification every time an issue with Priority = ASAP is saved.

Send a notification when a new issue is submitted

Each issue has a revision number that is increases by one each time the issue is saved. When an issue is first submitted, this revision number is set to “1”, so you can test the revision number to find new issues.

When:
	Revision Number = 1 AND
	Submitted Date = <Today> AND
	Priority = ASAP OR
		Priority = Today

This when condition looks for new issues submitted today with priority of ASAP or Today.

Send a notification when certain users update an issue

In the default workflow, employees can mark the issues they reported as Dropped or Resolved. When this happens, you can notify the owner of the issue.

Send Notification To:
	<Owner>

When:
	<User in Group> = Employees AND
	Progress Update

Send a notification when an issue is resolved

You can use the <Contact> macro to notify employees when the issues they submitted are resolved, dropped, or need to be verified by the employee. The contact for an issue is always the employee who reported the issue.

Send Notification To:
	<Contact>

When:
	Progress Update AND
	( Progress = Resolved OR
		Progress = Dropped OR
		Progress = To be Verified )

However, if you want to send an e-mail with a different subject for each possible case (for example, “Issue resolved”, “Issue dropped”, and “Issue to verify”), you need to define three notifications, one for each Progress value.

Editing Notifications

HelpDesk Admin provides a Notification Editor for editing notifications. To open the editor, click Notification Editor on the Project menu. With the Notification Editor, you can:

Specify who will receive the notification. Select the names of one or more Enterprise HelpDesk users from the Send Notification to list.

Define when you want Enterprise HelpDesk to send the notification. Click

beside the When list to define a when condition, which is like a query that retrieves updated issues.

Specify what you want to include in the notification message. The body of a notification message can include information from the issue or the revision history.

Describe why the notification was sent. Type a one-line description in the Notification Description box. You can include this description in the body of the e-mail message.

Specifying Notification Recipients

While you can send notifications to specific Enterprise HelpDesk users and contacts, it’s typically more useful to send notifications to the users listed in the Owner and Contact fields of an issue. To do this, you use macros. For example, to send a notification to the owner of an issue, you click the <Owner> macro in the Send Notification To list.

<Owner>

Defining When Conditions

About When Conditions

When conditions determine when Enterprise HelpDesk sends notifications. A when condition is a test. If an issue satisfies the test, Enterprise HelpDesk sends a notification for that issue. You typically use when conditions to:

Test for updates of a given field. For example, a when condition can generate a notification when issues are reassigned (by testing if the Owner field has been updated).

Test for updates by a specific user or by users in a specific group. For example, a when condition can generate a notification when anybody except a manager updates the Priority.

To edit the when conditions for a notification, you use the When Editor. Like the Query Editor, the When Editor allows you to combine multiple conditions with parentheses and the And and Or operators.

To open the When Editor:

Sending Notifications of Field Updates

To send Update notifications for a field, select the Maintain Revision History check box for that field (in the Field Editor).

Basing Notifications on Users

The Field Name list includes the macros <User> and <User in Group>. Use these macros together with = and <> to test who updated an issue. For example, the following condition sends a notification when any employee updates the Progress of an issue (in the default workflow, employees can mark issues as Resolved or Dropped).

Notification Based on User Groups

Specifying Notification Contents

A notification message can include information about the event and issues that generated the notification. For example, if Enterprise HelpDesk generates a notification because a new high priority issue was submitted, the message can include a brief description such as "New high priority issue".

Notifications generated because of changes to a field can include entries from the Revision History that show the changes. The notifications can also include either a summary or a complete copy of the issue.

To specify the contents, you select one or more of the following from the Include list:

Notification Description is the text entered in the Notification Description box of the Notification Editor.

Detailed is a copy of the issue.

Revision Record is the entry from the Revision History for the change that generated the notification.

Summary is a brief summary of the issue.

The Notification Description, Revision Record, and Summary are included as text in the message body. Detailed is included as a separate attachment.

To change the information included in the Summary section, edit the Notification - Summary report. For the Detailed attachment, edit the Notification - Detailed Record report.

By default, the Detailed attachment is an HTML file. If you use Crystal Reports for listing reports, the Detailed attachment is an RTF file. See Viewing Reports for more information on using Crystal Reports for listing reports.

The subject of an e-mail notification message is automatically generated, and has this format:

Managing Workflow with Notifications

The Progress (status) of an issue indicates where the issue is in your issue tracking system. As the status of an issue changes from New to Assigned to In Progress to To Be Verified to Resolved, different team members become responsible for the issue.

For example, when the issue is assigned to a help desk analyst, you can use update notifications to help manage your help desk workflow. To do this, define a notification that is sent to <Owner> when the issue is assigned and the Progress field set to Assigned.

When the help desk analyst marks the issue as In Progress, you can send a notification to the employee who submitted the issue. Similarly, when an employee updates an issue (for example, by adding more details to the description), you can have Enterprise HelpDesk notify the help desk analyst of the change.

Setting Up Notifications

Overview

HelpDesk Web Admin, a web-based administration utility.

HelpDesk Admin, a Microsoft Windows-based administration tool.

To set up notifications:

Set up the notification service.

In HelpDesk Web Admin, specify the Enterprise HelpDesk user account used to send notifications.

In HelpDesk Admin, set the Mail Server options. These options configure the mail server used to send notifications, and specify how often the notification services checks for new notifications to send.

Define the notifications you want to send.

Setting Up the Notification Service

Enterprise HelpDesk installs a Microsoft Windows service named Mq Issue Agent. This service runs on the server where you installed HelpDesk Web, and takes care of generating and sending e-mail notifications.

During installation, you can specify whether you want the service to start automatically whenever the server boots or you want to start the service manually.

To set up the notification service on Windows XP:

Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Services to open Services.

In the right pane, right-click the Mq Issue Agent service, and then click Properties.

On the Log On tab, select This account to choose a user account. Type the password for the account in Password, and then type it again in Confirm password.

The user account must be a valid domain user account and have permissions through the network.

Click Apply.

On the General tab, stop and start the service.

To set up the notification service on Windows 2000:

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click Administrative Tools to open Services.

In the right pane, right-click the Mq Issue Agent service, and then click Properties.

On the Log On tab, select This account to choose a user account. Type the password for the account in Password, and then type it again in Confirm password.

The user account must be a valid domain user account and have permissions through the network.

Click Apply.

On the General tab, stop and start the service.

To set up the notification service on Windows NT:

Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Services to open Services.

Stop the Mq Issue Agent service.

Click Startup.

In the Service dialog box, select Startup Automatic if you want to start the service automatically every time the computer is restarted.

Select This Account and enter a valid domain user account and password that has permissions through the network.

Click OK.

Click Start to start the service.

Setting the Mail Server Options

To set the mail server options:

In HelpDesk Admin, click Options on the Tools menu.

Set the server mail options. These options are used when sending notifications.

If you use an SMTP mail system, test your settings by clicking Test.


Option	Description
Server Mail System	1 = MAPI 2 = SMTP 4 = Lotus Notes
Server Mail Sender	Name of sender for SMTP e-mail. Some SMTP mail servers require the sender name to be a valid e-mail address. Note that this name does not appear in the From field.
Server MAPI Profile	Name of the MAPI Profile. If you have one profile only, you can leave this field blank.
SMTP Server	Name or IP address of your SMTP mail server. You can test your settings by clicking Test.
Server Mail Interval	Specifies how often (in minutes) Enterprise HelpDesk generates notifications.

Specifying the User Account Used to Send Notifications

By default, HelpDesk Web uses the issueagent user account (password = issuesvc) to log on to Enterprise HelpDesk and send notifications.

To set the user account:

In HelpDesk Web Admin, click the Notifications tab.

Type the user name and password, and click Apply.

After you change the user account, you must stop and restart the Mq Issue Agent service.