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Tip Of The Week - Using Notifications To Stay On Top Of Things

Do you find out about stuff well after the event? Do you wish you knew before you blew the budget out on a job? Wouldn't it be handy to be told when it was time to invoice a job? Would it make things easier to automatically notify your clients when the job was ready to be picked up? Using notifications in WorkflowMax you can stay right on top of where each job is at and if there is anything you need to be aware of.

Notifications can be created to alert you when:

  • The state of a job changes
  • New tasks, notes or documents have been added to the job
  • The actual time on a job or task is approaching or has exceeded its estimated time
  • The due date of a job or task is approaching or has exceeded its estimated due date
  • Time written against an ad hoc job, and time exceeding a certain amount on an ad hoc job (Practice Manager only)

You do not have to be assigned to a job to be notified about it. Notification Groups can be created, for example Account Management, who can be assigned to a Notification. The Notification Group will be alerted when a Notification is triggered even though they aren't assigned to work on the job.

When a Notification is triggered an alert will appear at the top of your screen.

Click the view link to view the list of Notifications. With the list displayed you can click on each individual alert icon to view in more detail, or you can delete the alert by clicking on the close icon (x).
Alerts will not be sent to the user who triggered the event. For example if you added a new note to a job you wouldn't want to receive a notification.

Notifications will also be sent out via email to all intended recipients. To avoid being sent email notifications you can go to My Max -> Preferences and de-select Enable Email Notifications

Setting up Notifications

To setup your Notifications go to Admin->Notification

The first screen displayed is the Default Notifications. These are the standard notifications where you can't change the parameters. Choose to enable these notifications for all staff members assigned to the job. You can also select to add a Notification Group.
If you wish to receive notifications via an RSS feed then click the RSS icon in the onscreen alert, and choose your favoured RSS Reader.

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A Notification Group are members of the team who may not be assigned to the job, but still want to know when something happens to it. As an example, the Accounting team may want to know when a new Cost is added to the job.

To create a Notification Group click on the Notification Groups tab.

Give the Group a name e.g. Accounts. Select the Staff members who belong to the group and click Save. You can now assign this Notification Group to both your default and Custom Notifications.

Custom Notifications provide real time visibility into how your jobs are tracking. There are six types of Custom Notifications you can create:

  • Ad hoc time exceeds permitted time (Practice Manager only)
  • Job - Estimated vs Actual time
  • Job State change
  • Job Task - Estimated vs Actual time
  • Job/Task due date
  • Milestones
  • New Adhoc time (Practice Manager only)
  • New Job

In addition, it is possible to include your clients to be notified when a job changes state. Please note that only clients with a log on will have access to the notifications.

 

custom_notifications_new_screen.png

 

Select the Notification Type from the drop down list and click the Add button. This will list the Notification in the lower grid. Using the drop downs for each notification type you can specify:

  • What Job State to trigger the notification
  • What percentage of estimated vs actual time that the team needs to be notified about
  • How many days before or after a due date the notification should be created

Notify client of job state change

When setting up a custom rule for job state notifications, (Admin-Notifications-Custom tab) you can set an option to notify the client contact on the job. Using this feature you could send an automated email to a client letting them know that the job is ready for collection, or you are waiting for their response.

Note that the contact will only be identified if they have a WorkflowMax login (you can set this up under the Client Manager, and by editing the contact)

 

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Job Note notifications

You can also notify clients when job notes are added/edited. When you add a job note, all client contacts (with a login) will be listed. On saving the note, all selected client contacts will receive email notifications of the job note and any comments. They can also collaborate on the note by replying to the emails.

When the note is saved, if there is a contact subscribed and the note is not marked as being public then the system will automatically change the note to be public. This is to ensure the contact can view the note should they decide to log into WorkflowMax and view the job.

When adding a comment to a note associated with a job or job task the full list of recipients who will be notified about that comment will be listed. This includes those staff assigned to the job/task and any additional users subscribed to the note.

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Gavin George
A thought leader in the cloud computing industry, Gavin George is the Co-founder & General Manager of WorkflowMax - the cloud-based workflow management software used by thousands of marketing and advertising agencies worldwide. With over 7 years of experience in cloud computing solutions, Gavin intimately understands the challenges that companies face in transitioning and managing their business on the cloud.

Gavin George