Email Notifications in Highstage

Introduction

Highstage makes use of automated email notifications to send messages to appropriate Highstage users' whenever specific events in Highstage occurs:

These notifications can inform users of certain events, changes and provide users with relevant information or prompt users to take action.

In this article, you will be introduced to the concept, capabilities and configuration of automated email notifications in Highstage.

Installation

Email notifications is a default feature in Highstage from version SW10055-8 and requires no initial installation or setup. It does, however, require that outgoing mails are enabled for your Highstage installation.

Please refer to and follow the Outgoing Highstage Mail Notification guide to ensure that outgoing mails is configured.

• To verify whether the configuration for the outgoing mails from Highstage is properly configured, choose SYSTEM> DIAGNOSTICS and click MAIL SEND TEST as an administrator.

VALIDATION: If you receive the message Sending mail...ok, then your Highstage installation is ready for automated email notifications.

Accessibility

Email Notifications can be accessed by administrators directly from the side navigation menu.

• To access Email Notifications, choose SYSTEM > Email Notifications:

This will give you an overview of existing active and inactive Triggers and Events and allows you to create new custom Triggers.

Triggers

Whenever a specific Event in Highstage occurs, a Trigger is responsible for sending out email notifications to select users'.

A Trigger has a wide range of properties that are used to specify the various the filters and conditions that must be met for messages to be sent. This enables you to create highly customizable Triggers that can send out very general messages to all Highstage users, or very specific Triggers that only reaches specific users with more critical and relevant matters in mind.

Highstage comes bundled with a number predefined Default Triggers representing the standard occurrences in Highstage. When any of these events occurs - appropriate stakeholders will be notified by receiving an email notification message. The messages can inform relevant users of changes in Highstage, or prompt them to take further action.

Similarly, you can create and configure any number of Custom Triggers to replace or supplement any of the default triggers. Custom triggers can be fully customized - allowing you to define the content, layout, events, filters and options for each individual trigger.

Procedure

This illustration gives you a brief overview of the structure associated of each individual Trigger:

The following procedure occurs for each active Trigger in Highstage:

1. A user performs an action or makes a change in Highstage which corresponds with a specific Event.
2. Highstage checks whether the event occurred on an item of any of the specific Basetypes and/or Subtypes.
3. An additional check is made to ensure that item are also associated with any of the listed Workspaces.
4. If the item was of the specific type and associated with a listed Workspace, the listed recipients will receive an email notification message.

Properties

The following table gives you a complete overview of all columns associated with each individual Trigger:

Default Triggers

Highstage comes bundled with a number of predefined Triggers representing core actions and events performed by users in Highstage. These Triggers can be enabled and disabled ay any time.

These default Triggers can be recognized by the Predefined field associated with each Trigger:

The following list gives you a detailed overview of all predefined Highstage Triggers:

All Predefined Triggers are regularly maintained and updated by Highstage to reflect standard functionality.

It is important to note that any changes you make to a Predefined Trigger will be overwritten when updating your Highstage installation (excluding the active, title,description, rationale templateitem and templatefile properties). Any other property will be overwritten when updating Highstage,

TIP: If you want to make changes to a predefined Trigger, consider making a copy of the Trigger with your preferred modifications and disable the predefined Trigger. Predefined Triggers will remain inactive until manually reactivated.

Custom Triggers

In addition to default bundled Triggers, Highstage allows you to create any number of custom Triggers.

Custom Triggers can be recognized by the Custom field associated with each Trigger:

• Visit Guides for instructions regarding creating and managing existing Triggers.

Trigger Types (Events)

Highstage comes with a number of Events which represents the various actions or changes that users can perform in Highstage. Whenever such event occurs, if a Trigger is configured to 'listen' to such event, messages will be sent to appropriate users'.

• Choose SYSTEM > Email Notifications > trigger Types (Events) to get an overview of all existing Events in Highstage:

The following table gives you a brief overview of the various Events in Highstage:

Security

Highstage makes use of ts_trigger as a new available Basetype in Highstage to facilitate automated email notifications.

By default, only Highstage administrators with AdminRead/AdminWrite privileges has permissions and access to view, create or modify existing email notification triggers.

Modify security settings

Permissions to view, modify or create new email notification triggers can be granted to existing users' and/or user groups in Highstage by configuring the permissions associated with the ts_trigger basetype.

1. Choose SYSTEM > Security > Basetype security in the side navigation menu.
2. Locate ts_trigger:

This Basetype is used to manage the security/accessibility of new or existing Triggers in Highstage.

The listed fields gives the following permissions in Highstage:

3. Fill out which users/groups/resources who should be able to view, modify or create Triggers in Highstage.
4. Reset Highstage for the changes to take effect.

TIP: You can read more about Basetype and other security related concepts on our official page regarding Security in Highstage.

Traceability

Whenever Highstage sends out email notification messages, an entry is added to the Eventlog on the item where the message originates from:

This ensures that anyone with access to an item can access the Eventlog and get explicit information regarding each instance where Highstage has sent out email notification messages in relation to that individual item.

• To view the Eventlog associated with an item in Highstage, choose Eventlog in the top navigation menu:

Each entry in the Eventlog will provide you with explicit information about each instance of sending out email notification messages:

• The time when the messages was sent (EventTime).
• The Type and Item where the message originated from (ObjType and Obj).
• Which Trigger was responsible for the email notification including the listed recipients (Message).

Templates

Each Trigger has an associated email template file. This file determines the contents and the visual layout of the email notification that will be sent to the appropriate recipient:

Each template can include information regarding the item, the affiliated users and the cause for the email notification. Similarly, the template can include advanced logic to alter the information and appearance of the email notification based on a variety of conditions. For instance, a template can be configured to inform the recipients differently if the notification stemmed from a Document or an Action.

Any relevant property in Highstage can be used as a basis for defining the email contents that is sent to relevant Highstage users.

Template files

Each email notification template is a highly configurable .cshtml file that determines the visual layout and contents of the email notifications. The email that it sent, is a generated webpage based on HTML and CSS where Highstage properties and advanced logic can be applied through C#.

Click here to download the default mail template used by Highstage.

Available Highstage variables

Highstage variables enables dynamic retrieval of data from existing columns in Highstage.

You can use Highstage variables to create dynamic email templates as they automatically retrieve data from Highstage and insert them into the mail message.

Tip: You can get a good idea about using Highstage variables by taking a look at our existing default mail template. This mail template is used as the default template in Highstage and includes a large number of Highstage variables.

Item columns

you can refer to any existing physical column associated with an item in your Highstage installation by replacing COLUMN with the appropriate column name:

@Model.COLUMN

User columns

you can refer to any existing physical column associated with any user in your Highstage installation by replacing COLUMN with the appropriate column name:

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@Model.USER.COLUMN

Trigger columns

You can refer to any column associated with the current Trigger using any of the listed Highstage variables:

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@Model.ts_active

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@Model.ts_triggertype

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@Model.ts_title

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@Model.ts_columnname

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@Model.ts_description

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@Model.ts_mailcause

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@Model.ts_mailcc

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@Model.ts_mailreplyto

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_mailto

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_negativefiltertype

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_negativefilterworkspace

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_positivefiltertype

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_rationale

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_step

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_templatefile

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_templateitem

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_id

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_positivefilterworkspace

xxxxxxxxxx
@Model.ts_triggert

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@Model.ts_ts_name

Guides

Creating a new Trigger

You can create any number of custom Triggers to add to your Highstage installation.

1. To create a new Trigger, choose SYSTEM > Email Notifications > Create new Trigger.

2. Do the following:

   • Fill out an appropriate Title for the new Trigger.
   • Select an appropriate Event in the Trigger Type (Event) dropdown.
   • Provide an optional description.

3. Select Create.

When filled and created, you will be navigated to the view associated with the newly created Trigger:

Note: The newly created trigger has not yet been filled out to include the various recipients, filters and conditions to fully function. Please refer to the Properties section for more information about the available fields and how to fill them out.

Clone an existing Trigger

You can clone an existing Trigger to take advantage of existing Triggers and their associated properties.

• Choose SYSTEM > Email Notifications and select either Active or Inactive Triggers:

• Click on the appropriate Trigger:

• Click Clone.

This will navigate you to the Create form:

• Do the following:

  • Change or keep the existing Title for the copied Trigger (Optional).
  • Change or keep the selected Event in the Trigger Type (Event) dropdown.
  • Clear, modify or keep the existing description (Optional).

• Click Create.

You will automatically be navigated to the newly created Trigger where all of the associated properties will be transferred from the originating Trigger:

Testing Email Notifications

By default, Highstage does not send out email notifications to the users' who initiated the Trigger.

Example: If you are listed both as an Author and Reviewer and sends a document in Review, you will not receive an email notification message, as you were the initiating user.

Testing with one Highstage user account:

You can add the following snippet to your custom.schema.xml to allow the 'initiating' user to also receive email notifications:

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 <parameter name="AllowMailToInitiator" value="1" />

• After making changes to custom.schema.xml, ensure that you reset Highstage for any changes to take effect.

This enables you to make changes in Highstage and also receive the appropriate email notification messages if the conditions associated with an existing Trigger is fulfilled.

Testing with several Highstage user accounts:

Without making changes to custom.schema.xml, you must test email notification Triggers by using two or more separate Highstage user accounts.

In this manner, you can ensure that one user performs the appropriate action in Highstage where the other user is listed as an appropriate recipient.

Configuration

Configure accessibility in the side navigation menu

The following snippet can be added to custom.schema.xml in your Highstage installation files to make the Email notifications section available to Highstage users' outside of the systems menu:

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    <type name="ts_menu">
        <menu name="default">
            <section name="mail_notifications" icon="fas fa-mail-bulk" type="ts_trigger"/>
        </menu>
    </type>

TIP: For more information about configuring the side navigation menu, please refer to the Side navigation menu configuration guide.