Developing EMail Notifications

Many organizations use email notifications to notify or remind workflow participants about work assignments. Typical uses of email notifications in Process applications include such notifications as:

To help facilitate use of email notifications, FileNet provides a set of default email notification files. These email notification (.MSG) files are text files (containing HTML-formatted content) that are available for you to customize.

Warning: FileNet recommends that you do not add email notification files or rename the existing files.

The email notification files contain placeholder variables embedded in the HTML. The values for these variables are supplied by the Process Engine services at runtime, where a given field variable obtains its values from the field that is named by the string following the "$" prefix in the field variable name. The Process Engine notification process caches the notification files when the process starts. When invoked, the Process Engine notification process retrieves the necessary data from the notification information database, populates the variables with the relevant field information, and dispatches the file via the SMTP service (specified using the Process Engine Task Manager). See the Configuring Email Notification. See also Optional eMail Notification Variables.

Modifying eMail Notification Files

Use the following procedure to modify the default email notification files:

  1. Enable logging for the Exception and Begin Operation categories. Configure these logging options using the Configuration Console. See Configure Event Log Options.
  2. Expose the associated system fields, if they have not already been exposed, or are not exposed by default. Exposed fields are system and data fields in a roster, queue, or event log that have been made available for searches and sorting.
  3. Review the EMail Notification Types to determine which email notifications you will need and which default files need to be modified.
  4. Locate the email notification files as follows:

    The integer directories at the end of the path match the VWSession WEBAPP* fields.

  5. Select all of the files in the directory, and change the file attributes from Read-only to Read/Write.
  6. Locate and make a copy of the appropriate .MSG file. You should change the extension of the copy to .ORG (to indicate it represents the original content of the file).
  7. Open the notification file (with the .MSG extension) in a text editor.
  8. Modify the HTML content according to the changes you wish to make (see Email Notification Types.
  9. Save the changes and close the text file.
  10. Using the Process Task Manager, restart the Process Engine server. This enables the vwnotify process to cache the changed files when the Process Engine restarts.

EMail Notification Types

The following table lists the email notification types, the file names, and briefly describes the purpose of the notification:

Notification type

File name

Description

Step notifications

Overdue Step Notification

stp_deadline.msg

Sent to a workflow participant to indicate that a step is overdue for completion.

Step Assignment Notification

stp_new.msg

Sent as a notification that the participant was assigned a new step.

Step Reminder Notification

stp_reminder.msg

Sent as a reminder to a workflow participant that a step deadline is approaching.

Tracker notifications

Tracking Assignment Notification

trk_new.msg

Sent to a participant to indicate that he/she has been designated as a tracker for this workflow.

Overdue Tracker Step Notification

trk_stp_deadline.msg

Sent to a tracker to indicate that a workflow step has not been completed and is overdue.

Workflow notifications

Workflow Exception Notification

trk_exception.msg

Sent as a notification to a workflow tracker that a workflow exception occurred.

Workflow Overdue Notification

trk_wf_deadline.msg

Sent to an assigned tracker to indicate that a workflow is overdue for completion.

Workflow Reminder Notification

trk_wf_reminder.msg

Sent to an assigned tracker as a notification that a workflow deadline is approaching.

Milestone notifications

Workflow Milestone Notification

org_milestone.msg

Sent to the workflow originator, which typically is the person who launched the workflow, as a notification that a workflow milestone was reached.

Workflow Tracker Milestone Notification

trk_milestone.msg

Sent to an assigned tracker as a notification that workflow milestone was reached.

Using SSL

By default, Process notification does not use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. The email notification files reference the web server (as specified using the Process Configuration Console), and include links similar to:

http://<$F_WEBSERVER>/idmws/...

If you enable SSL on your web server, you must modify the http:// protocol designation to https:// for all occurrences of the files you are referencing. For example, all references to a web server would appear similar to the following:

https://<$F_WEBSERVER>/idmws/...

For information on specifying web application properties for SSL, see Setting Web Application Properties for VWService.