Reminders Utility
The Reminder Utility template provides a best-in-class pattern for implementing reminders notifications in your tenant.
In addition to the standard reminders and escalations capabilities in Fusion Manage, this template allows to configure reminders and overdue notifications in a much easier manner and with more flexibility. For example, email notifications can be sent in advance of a defined target date to responsible users and process owners. In addition, overdue notifications can also be sent using custom text templates.
Standard Escalation feature abilities
Out-of-the-box Fusion Manage allows us to configure an escalation on any state within a workflow. In the diagram below, an escalation is configured on the Investigation state of the workflow.
Escalations can be configured to run after a period an item in exists in a state. For example, in the screenshot below, we can see that after 3 days of being in a state a script will run that will send an email.
Escalations are always defined upon the time an item spends in a state in a workflow. However, there is often a requirement to send an escalation or reminder not based on the time spent in a state, but based on a due date defined for the given item
As an example, consider the following item that has two Target dates defined: one for the Claim Handler and the other for the Claim Costing. We would like to be able to remind the assignees of these steps perhaps 5 days before those target dates are reached.
Therefore, the purpose of the Reminder Utility is not to replace the escalation functionality in Fusion Manage, but to provide a reusable pattern that enables escalations to be extended to handle these types of situations.
As we will discover in the next sections, the reminders utility is based on the standard escalation functionality. It just provides an easy way to deploy advanced capabilities when using it.
The template can distinguish between two types of reminders, reminders that are sent before the target date and overdue notifications that are sent after the target date. In both cases, the task owner can be included on the email. The TIMERS workspace keeps track of the number of notifications sent and the date the last email was sent.
How does the Reminder Utility work
The template will add a new workspace named "Timer". The Timer workspace will hold the event details that will trigger notifications to the responsible users. The records are created by a script that is provided as part of this template, the records in this workspace will be validated on a daily basis by the standard escalation abilities and then be disabled once their conditions are met. The Timer records are linked to the items they manage and are usually only visible to administrators.