12.1 Introduction

All actions which take place within Business Collaborator are recorded, e.g. reading or editing a document, moving a folder or deleting a database. These actions, or events (see section 4.7), can be notified to the user in a number of different ways:

• Event icons are displayed beside the objects where the event took place
• The history of events is accessible from the object's information page
• A summary of all events within a folder is available by clicking on .

In addition, you may also wish to be notified by email whenever particular actions take place on a certain folder or document. Event notification allows you to do this so that you don't need to log in to find out what has been happening. (Notification is sent in the form of email messages.) There are two distinct types of notification:

• Instant notification - an email is sent as soon as the event takes place
• Delayed notification - actions are grouped into a single email message, sent with the frequency you prescribe

Notification also allows managers to specify which of their employees should be informed when particular events take place.

Event notification greatly assists users who wish to use Business Collaborator as a tool to manage workflow. As soon as one author has completed his changes to a document, the next author can be notified automatically, ensuring that the document is completed as quickly and efficiently as possible. By combining event information so closely with the documents themselves, Business Collaborator users get the best of both worlds - complete control over their documents with maximum flexibility in prescribing associated procedures.

Every time you set up notification, you will need to make several initial decisions including what you want to be emailed about and whether it is appropriate to email other people as well. Most of these settings can be altered subsequently. For instance, you may decide at a later date that you do not wish to receive emails whenever anyone reads a document in your folder if you find that you are getting overloaded with information. However, one thing which you cannot alter is to change instant notification into delayed notification or vice versa. The only way to do this is to remove the original setting and add a new one of the required type.

Note 1

Instant notification is only available on documents, not on folders, workspaces or your home page. As this is a change to Business Collaborator, implemented in version 4.5, any instant notification already in place on folders etc. will be unaffected.

Note 2

If you already subscribe to workspace reports (see section 5.7.4.1), informing you of events in your workspaces on a daily basis, you may continue to do so but global (delayed) notification (see section 12.4) is recommended instead as it is more flexible and is set and edited in the same way as other types of notification.

Note 3

Note that choosing to receive email in HTML format results in a far more meaningful email message as the object, a link directly to it and detailed information about it are made available.