Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Interact Intranet: System Emails

When undergoing the process of migrating your intranet to a new environment one of the key things you don't want to do is confuse your audience with system generated emails prior to your launch and when you are preparing to launch you need to be able to train your users appropriately and tailor system messages.  To that end, the purpose of this post is to inform folks of what the system generated emails are, how to disable them, and how to modify them.

List of system generated emails


Unfortunately an official list of all system generated emails doesn't exist so I've compiled this list based upon random activity I've done on our installation so far.  I'm sure I've missed a few so forgive me if this isn't complete.  Please comment or email me if I need to adjust this list!
  • Documents
    • Document Review Reminder
      • Triggered by: When a document has reached the review date
      • Sent to: Author/Owner of Document
    • Keyword Suggestion
      • Triggered by: a user suggestion a keyword to a document
      • Sent to: the Author/Owner of the document
    • Intranet Document <title>
      • Triggered by: selecting the "Email this Document" link from the Options drop-down within a document
      • Sent to: whoever the user selects as the recipient
    • You have been tagged
      • Triggered by: creating a comment and using the @ tag to identify a particular person
      • Sent to:  Person that was tagged 
      • Note: As of 5.1.3, this feature has a bug in that the link to the corresponding document is relative where it should be absolute.
    • Document Comment Received
      • Triggered by: User leaving a comment on a document
      • Sent to: Document author
    • Document Watch
      • Triggered by: edit of a file
      • Sent to: User that set a watch on a document
    • Comment Reported
      • Triggered by: User reporting a comment on a document
      • Sent to: Document author
    • Is This Up To Date?
      • Triggered by: User completing the "Is this up to date?" option on a document
      • Sent to: Author/Owner of document
  • Teams
    • <user name> has requested that the following team be created:
      • Triggered by: User requesting a team which has been designated as needing approval
      • Sent to: Power Users
    • Your request to create a new team has been rejected by <power user name>
      • Triggered by: Administrator rejection of a requested team
      • Sent to: Requestor
    • {TEAMNAME} Notification.
      • Triggered by: enabling "announcements" in the team activity feed and posting an activity of type "broadcast"
      • Sent to: all team members except the author
    • <team name> Membership
      • Triggered by: 
        • being granted membership
        • having membership revoked
      • Sent to: member who is granted or revoked access
    • <user> has invited you to join <team name>
      • Triggered by: a user inviting you to join a team
      • Sent to: invitee
    • Team Creation
      • Triggered by: the creation of a new team
      • Sent to: the person that created it
  • Profile
    • New Blog Post
      • Triggered by: The creation of a new blog post
      • Sent to: The person subscribed
    • You have received a comment on one of your blog postings
      • Triggered by:  someone adding a comment to a blog post of yours
      • Sent to: blog owner
    • Share Notification
      • Triggered by: someone sharing a document with you
      • Sent to: the person selected in the "share with" area
    • You have been tagged
      • Triggered by: being tagged in someone's news feed
      • Sent to: the person tagged
    • Interact Answers
      • Triggered by: Answers question matching an individual's expertise
      • Sent to: user with matching expertise
    • Feed Notification 
      • Triggered by: 
        • Response to a comment left on another person's news feed
        • Response to an answer left in the QA module
        • Someone posting on your wall
      • Sent to: The person that posts the initial comment
  • Administration
    • Interest Suggestion
      • Triggered by: User suggesting a new interest in the profile area
      • Sent to: System administrators
    • Rejected Interest Suggestion
      • Triggered by: Admin rejecting an Interest Suggestion
      • Sent to: User that made the suggestion
    • ?System Upgrade? (THIS IS AN ALERT ONLY AFAIK)
      • Triggered by: Admin performing a scheduled upgrade and checking the box to notify all users of the downtime.
      • Sent to: Everyone that is logged in at the time?
  • Discussion Forums
    • Thread Notification
      • Triggered by: The creation of a thread
      • Sent to: Subscribed moderators of the discussion forum
    • Post Notification
      • Triggered by: The creation of a post to an existing thread
      • Sent to: Subscribed moderators of the discussion forum
  • Workflow & Forms
    • Intranet Alert
      • Triggered by: Your form being approved
        Sent to: The person who submitted the form in the first place
  • Advanced Document Management Module
    • Document Version Approval Request
      • Triggered by: Version Controlled document pending approval (required Advanced Document Management add-on)
      • Sent to: Designated approver
    • Document Comment Received
      • Triggered by: Version Controlled document receiving a comment (required Advanced Document Management add-on)
      • Sent to: Author/Owner that has requested comments

Modifying a system generated email's format

I'm still working on how to change the actual format of the email including things like the subject.  But in the meantime here are some instructions I've received (these are based on our 5.1.3 environment so apologies if the paths aren't the same as what you have).  The areas, in the image below, highlighted in yellow are editable:


 

 Salutation & Sign-off

Here are the steps to change these fields:
  1. Navigate on your frontend Interact server to Interact\WEB\Customer\App_Data
  2. There you will find customer specific EN_SystemText.xml which is where the Site Admin GUI interface stores system text
  3. You can amend the generic email message in the following nodes
    • SYSTEXT/INTERACT/PAGES/ALERTS/EXTRAS/EMAIL/SALUTATION
    • SYSTEXT/INTERACT/PAGES/ALERTS/EXTRAS/EMAIL/SIGNOFF
  4. Save the files, go to the Site Admin GUI and select the ‘Re-Sync’ button to clear the cache
Within the EN_SystemText.xml file this is what the area you'll need to edit looks like:
          <EMAIL>
            <SALUTATION Title="Dear">
              <HELP Help="" />
            </SALUTATION>
            <SIGNOFF Title="Regards,&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Intranet Team&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style='font-size:.8em;'&gt;This alert may have already been acted on by someone else. If so then please ignore this. This email is for information only, as such please do not reply.&lt;span&gt;">
              <HELP Help="" />
            </SIGNOFF>
          </EMAIL>
You can even enter HTML code into these fields, so if you would like a link to your intranet to always appear in the footer simply add the relevant HTML anchor tag into your footer text.

Header Image

In summary:
  1. Navigate to: Site Admin: Control Panel: Manage Application Variables: Global
  2. Change the setting for: Email header image address
    1. Default is: interact/styles/default/core/header.jpg
If you do not want any banner image at all in the email, simply leave this application variable blank.

Disabling a system generated email

I've been told that it isn't possible to block a particular type of system email.

For more information (Interact extranet login required):

  1. Customizing email alerts
  2. Customize the banner image on email alerts

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