Brief summary of this article:
Notifications help you to send messages and alerts to the responsible people when some important events or changes happen in the system. Notifications are a good alternative to views and dashboards. To stay aware your colleagues do not have to visit key views on a regular basis. Instead, they receive updates just in time.
In Targetprocess, there are email notifications of multiple sources: the ones configured in Notification Rules setup, Process Workflow settings, Following / Watch subscriptions, notifications optionally sent on Comment submission and @mentions. Automatic notifications can be also sent to external (third-party) services such as Slack using Automation Rules
Email Notifications
Notification Rules
Notification Rules allow you to keep track of changes to Targetprocess entities by configuring and sending email notifications. In the current version, only administrators of an instance can set up notifications for any other Targetprocess user.
Here you can configure notification rules based on Projects. Each of these rules defines when (it's 'Action'), whom (it's 'Recipient'), and where (it's 'Channel') to send the notification to:
Notifications frequency is locked between 20 seconds and 3 minutes. We group all the notifications and send them after certain time (at least 20 seconds) elapses since the last change occurred to you:
More information on Notification Rules:
- How to create Notification rule
- Which actions and entity types we support
- Which recipients are available at the moment
- How does Frequency calculate
Process Workflow Email Notifications
Targetprocess can be configured to send email notifications when something happens or changes in the system. For example, when an entity is created, assigned to a user, or commented on by someone.
Notifications of this kind are configured per Process. Before making changes it worth checking what Process does your Project follows.
Process Workflow notifications are configured by Administrators. Users cannot subscribe and unsubscribe from them at the moment. To control and sort incoming emails, users are welcome to set up rules and filters in their web-hosted inboxes or in the mail client programs.
More information on Process Workflow Email notifications:
- How to enable Email Notifications
- How to set up Email Notifications on various events
- How to get an Email Notification when the State is changed
- Configure email notifications for Service Desk users
- How to change an email notification template
- Email Template Markup Guide
Following / Watch Email Notifications
This feature allows a user to subscribe to a specific entity and receive digests about changes and updates related to it by email. For example, a developer may follow a User Story and receive notifications about its effort changes, new comments, new attachments.
You don’t need to follow entities one by one. When you follow a high-level planning item such as Feature, Epic, Release, Sprint, Team Iteration, Project, you’ll automatically receive updates with all nested work items such as User Stories, Bugs.
When you follow a high-level planning item, updates about Tasks will not be included in the notification. To receive information about Tasks, you need to follow their parent User Stories or Tasks themselves.
When you follow some entities, you will receive email notifications with all important updates in these entities every 2 hours.
Administrators and Project Managers cannot add a member as a follower of an entity (user stories, tasks, bugs, etc). However, it is possible to configure scripts for the automatic subscription. How it works: when a user is assigned to any entity (e.g. User Story, Feature, Bug, etc.), the script subscribes the user to the entity as a follower. Scripts are configured via Automation Rules.
It is also not possible to view a list of followers within UI. The list of followers can be retrieved from the system within REST API call only.
More information: Follow / Watch entities
Email Notifications optionally sent on the Comment submission
When you enter a Comment, you have the option to Notify by email different types of Users:
- Creator: the person who created an Entity
- Assigned people: all the Users who are currently assigned to the Entity
- Project Members: all the Users that are Members of the entity’s Project
- Requester(s): all the Requesters who are currently assigned to the Request
The notifications are sent upon the selection made with special checkboxes below the comment addition form. The settings of events are independent of Process Workflow notifications, while templates are shared with them.
More information: How to Communicate with Users Using Comments and Emails
@Mention people and teams in comments
Sometimes while adding a comment you need to be sure that a particular person or whole team will read it. Just mention the person or the team you need in your comment and they will get an email notification.
It works very similar to Twitter mentions. Type @ sign with the first letters of the user’s or team’s name, then you will see a list of matching options. Select the one you want. You can mention several people in a single comment for sure.
A person who was mentioned in the comment will receive an email notification with a full comment text:
More information: @Mention people and teams in comments
Automatic notifications within Automation Rules
The automation rules allow you to configure automatic scripts (triggers) that listen to changes happening with Targetprocess entities in real-time. When an important event occurs the rule sends a relevant notification to an external web service (URL) immediately. Using the Automation Rules, you can create your own integrations with:
- third-party services (e.g. Slack or Zapier)
- your own service
- with Targetprocess itself
Notifications Feed
Browsing Notifications feed lets you catch up on the changes like these:
- any comments where you or your team have been mentioned
- updates that come from Notification Rules. Administrator of your account can customize what will appear here
- activity on items that you are following
Go to the Left menu and click 'Notifications' menu item to see these updates.
More information: Notifications Feed
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