Creating notification events and templates

By default, BMC Helix Business Workflows provides notifications for common events that occur during likely use of the product, and that are applicable to all the companies in a tenant. For more information about the default notifications, 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.

While creating notification templates, 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.

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 Settings.
3. Navigate to Notification Configuration > Manage Events.
4. On the Manage Events page, click New Event.

5. In the Create Notification Event pane, complete the following fields:

   Field	Action
   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.
   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.

6. Click Save.

   Note

   You can create only one event with an event name for a company.

To create a notification template

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Click Settings.
3. Navigate to Notification Configuration > Manage Templates.
4. On the Manage Templates page, click New Template.

5. In the Create Notification Template pane, complete the following fields:

   Field	Action
   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.Note: 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.
   Label	Select a label for the notification template. You can filter the templates based on a specific label.
   Event Options
   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.
   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.
   Company	By default, the company that you selected for the event is displayed. You cannot change the company in the template.
   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 Business Unit, Department, 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. Notes: 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

   

6. 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 fields.

   To insert placeholders for current values, click Insert Fields, expand the General menu, and add a field.

   Example expression

   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 Insert Fields, from General menu, you add Current Time and give the expression—Case priority was changed at .

7. To 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 in step 5, you can add links to the following fields:

   Module name	Field
   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

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

   Note

   Creating localized messages ensures that when a case agent changes the browser locale to one that BMC Helix Business Workflows supports, the notifications are sent in that language. If the notification is not available for that locale, the notification is sent in English.

   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:
   

9. Click Save.
   To delete a template, on the Manage Templates page, select the required template, and click Delete.

   Note

   You can create only one notification template with an event name, a template name, module, and company combination.

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