Creating notification events and templates

By default, BMC Helix Business Workflows provides notifications for common events that occur during likely use in a line of business. For more information about the default notifications in a line of business, see Notification events and templates.

However, as a case business analyst, you can create custom notifications related to cases, tasks, knowledge articles, milestones, and case approvals for your company. To create a custom notification, you must first create a notification event to define the event name in the product and a template to define the content and structure of the notification. You perform both tasks when creating custom notifications for any module. The tasks you perform next depends on the module for which you are creating a notification. For more information about the process of creating notifications, see Creating custom notifications.

Before you begin

If you are creating a custom notification for a change in an association field value, you must first create a field association mapping for the association field. For more information about field associations and their mappings, see Using association fields in record associations.

To create a notification event

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Click My Application Settings .

3. Navigate to Notification Configuration > Manage Events.

4. On the Manage Events page, from the Line of Business list, select the line of business for which you want to create an event.

   If you have access to a single line of business, the line of business is selected by default.

5. Click + Notification Event.

6. In the Create Notification Event pane, enter values in the Template Name, and complete the following fields:

   Field	Action
   Line of Business	The line of business that you selected to create the event is displayed.
   Company	Select the company for which you want to create the event. Select one of the following options: Global—All companies in a tenant have access to the event. A company name—Only the selected company has access to the event.
   Status	Select one of the following statuses: Enabled—The event is ready to use. Offline—The event is not available for use. You can enable it for use at any point. Delete—An event with the Delete status remains in the system, but it cannot be used in the application. For information about deprecated event status, see Deprecated statuses for notification events and templates.
   Label	Select a label for the event. You can filter the events based on a specific label.
   Description	Specify a description for the notification event.

7. Click Save.

   Important

   You can create only one event with an event name for a line of business.

To create a notification template

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Click My Application Settings .

3. Navigate to Notification Configuration > Manage Templates.

4. On the Manage Templates page,  from the Line of Business list, select the line of business for which you want to create a template.
   If you have access to a single line of business, the line of business is selected by default.
   
5. Click + Notification Template.

6. In the Create Notification Template pane, specify the Template Name, and complete the following fields:

   Field	Action
   Event	Select an event to associate it with the notification template. When the event occurs, the system uses the notification template to send the notification.
   Line of Business	By default, the line of business that you selected for the event is displayed. You cannot change the line of business in the template.
   Company	By default, the company that you selected for the event is displayed. You cannot change the company in the template.
   Module Name	Select the module for which you want to create a template.
   Default Notification Method	Select the default method for sending the notification to the recipients. Important: The notification method specified in the user's profile takes precedence over the notification method specified in the template. Example: In the default Case Status Change notification template, the notification method is set to Alert. This notification is sent to a case assignee and the case assignee's default notification method is set to Email. When the event occurs, instead of an alert notification, an email notification is sent to the case assignee.
   Description	Specify a description for the notification template.
   Status	By default, the status that you selected for the event is displayed. In the template, you can change the status to any of the following values: Enabled—The template is ready to use. Offline—The template is not available for use. You can enable it for use at any point. Delete—A template with the Delete status remains in the system, but it cannot be used in the application. For information about deprecated template status, see Deprecated statuses for notification events and templates.
   Label	Select a label for the notification template. You can filter the templates based on a specific label.
   Recipients
   Add Recipients	Click to add recipients other than the default recipients, and, in the Add Recipient pane, perform the following steps: From the Recipient Type list, select the type of recipient that you want to add. From the Company list, select the required company. To narrow down the search results, from the Support Organization and Support Group lists, select the required values. Click Apply. Select the recipient from the list displayed or use the text box to search for the recipient. Click Save. These recipients are displayed in the Recipients section.
   Recipients	Select the recipients. The recipients are displayed based on the module that you select and additional recipients that you have specified, if any. For example, if you selected the Knowledge module, the out-of-the-box recipients displayed are Assignee, Assignee's Manager, Reviewer, Reviewer's Manager. Important: You cannot modify the predefined list of recipients. For the following default notification templates and any template you create for the Social, Service Level Management- Case, or Service Level Management- Task module, the recipients are defined during run time: Notes from Activity Feed in Case Notes from Activity Feed in Case with Attachment Notes from Activity Feed in Task Notes from Activity Feed in Task with Attachment Case SLA Missed Task SLA Missed The icon in the Remove column indicates that you can delete a recipient. It is only displayed for the additional recipients that you specify.

    Sample field values for creating a template

   

7. To draft the notification messages, perform any of the following steps:

   • To create the template for an alert notification, click the Alert tab, and enter the message in the Subject text box. 

   • To create the template for an email notification, click the Email tab, and complete the following step:
     1. Format the text in the notification template.
     2. To add a table to the notification template, click .
        You can add columns, rows, and specify the table attributes. You can also add a caption and summary for the table.
     3. To add an image to the notification template, click .
        You can upload an image, or add a URL from which to refer the image. You can also define the attributes of the image.
     4. To add a link to the notification template, click .
        You can specify the details of the link, and also the target of the URL.

     Important

     If you cannot add a table, image, or hyperlink, contact your administrator to get HTML tags whitelisted.

     
     

   To insert a field or link in the notification message, see To insert fields and add links in a notification message.

8. Click Save.

9. (Optional) After you create the template, to draft the notification messages in different locales, click Localized Message, complete the fields, and save your message.

   If a user has defined the notification locale in BMC Helix ITSM > Person profile, and you create a localized notification message, the notifications are sent in the locale that is defined in the profile by the recipients. Learn more about localized notification messages in Localized Notifications.

   On the Alert and Email tabs, by using the Locale field, you can filter the messages based on the selected locale.
   The following figure shows the Localized Message and Locale fields that are displayed after you create the notification template:
   

To copy and modify a notification template

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Click My Application Settings .
   

3. Select Notification Configuration > Manage Templates.

4. On the Manage Templates page, from the Line of Business list, select the line of business to copy or modify a notification template.
   If you have access to a single line of business, the line of business is selected by default.
   

5. Select the template that you want to copy, and click Copy Template.

   Important

   • You cannot copy a notification template that is created for the Social module.
   • You cannot copy a notification template from one line of business to another line of business.

6. On the Copy Template dialog box, select the company for which you want to use this template, enter a new template name, and click Create Copy.
   The template copy consists of the template details, recipients, and localized template messages copied from the original template. The template copy has an event specific to a company.

   Important

   If you are creating a copy of the Case Reopened or Task Status Change template, do not change the template name.

   If you change the template name, notification action does not work correctly. Notifications are sent by using the default templates and not by using the copied template.

   
   

7. On the Edit Notification Template pane, modify the template based on your requirements, and click Save.
   You can modify the template description, default notification method, labels, status, recipients, and the notification message.

To insert fields and add links in a notification message

While creating notification templates, in a notification message, you can insert fields as placeholders for current values of variables. For example, you are creating the Case Priority Change template, and, in the email content, you want to display the time when the case priority is changed.

 In a notification message, you can add a link to the source of the notification. You can add a link that points to a case, knowledge article, task, and so on, based on the module for which you are creating notifications. For example, you create a notification template for case status change. When the status of a case is changed, a notification is sent to a user. The notification message contains a case ID with a link to the case. The user clicks the case ID and opens the case. This helps the user to quickly navigate to the source of the notification.

The following table describes how to insert a field and add a link in a notification message:

Action	Description
Insert placeholders for current values of variables	Click Insert Fields, and perform any of the following actions based on the Module Name that you select while creating a notification template: For case modules, expand the General menu or Case menu, and add a field. The Case menu consists of the case association fields and dynamic fields along with the case fields. For example, to display the time when the case priority is changed, in Insert Fields, from General menu, add Current Time and give the expression—Case priority was changed at . For task modules, expand the General menu or Task menu, and add a field. The Task menu consists of the case association fields and dynamic fields along with the task  fields. For knowledge modules, expand the General menu or Knowledge menu, and add a field. The Knowledge menu consists of the knowledge association fields and the knowledge fields. Important: Do not add confidential fields in a notification message. If you add a confidential field in a notification message, the field value is displayed in the message.
Add a link to the source of the notification	Insert a field and click Generate clickable link . For example, to add a link to a case, click Insert Fields, expand the Case Fields menu, add Display ID, and click Generate clickable link . When a notification is sent, the Display ID field displays the case ID with a link to the case. Based on the Module Name that you select while creating a notification template, you can add links to the following fields: Cases—Display ID Service Level Management - Case—Display ID Knowledge—Content ID Social—Parent_DisplayID Tasks—Display ID Service Level Management - Task—Display ID Case - Approval—Request Secondary Case - Watchlist—Display ID

Localized notifications

Notifications are sent in a locale other than English if the recipient has defined the notification locale in the Person profile in BMC Helix ITSM. The notification locale defined for all To, Cc, and Bcc recipients is checked. If all recipients have the same locale, the notification is sent in that locale. If a different locale is defined for any recipient, the notification is sent in English. The following image shows where to define the localized message and locale, and also lists examples to understand how localized notifications work:

The following locales are supported in notification templates:

• English (United States): en_US
• German (Germnay): de_DE
• Spanish (International Sort): es_ES
• French (France): fr_FR
• Italian (Italy): it_IT
• Portuguese (Brazil): pt_BR
• Swedish (Sweden): sv_SE
• Dutch (Netherlands): nl_NL
• Danish (Denmark): da_DK

Deprecated statuses for notification events and templates

The following table lists the statuses that you should not use for your events and templates:

Where to go from here