When an employee has a qualification expiring, we are able to automate an alert to their manager.
Below are a list best practices to use when creating this alert.
Alert Name
It's important to use meaningful alert names to help identify the purpose of the alert. As this alert is usually set up for managers of a specific department or location, that should be included in your name. An example could be "Qualification Expiry - Sydney Location."
Group and Function
The group and function identify what the alert is trying to send. As we are looking to send an alert to management when a qualification is expiring, select the Employees group and the Qualification Expiry Function.
Execute Every VS Execute At
The Execute Every and Execute At identify how often you want to send alerts out to users. When looking to notify managers, it is recommended that a set time be user to generate the alert. In this example, the alert will generate at 9:00am each day and is sent to each manager in the send group
Allow Resend After
The allow Resend After controls how often we want to alert the manager of the affected employees. In this case, it will notify the manager once a fortnight until the qualification has been updated or is no longer in the date range.
Resend no more than
The Resend No More Than value provides a cap of how many times this alert will be sent before it is essentially deactivated. As a best practice, the Resend No More Than value should be left at 0 which means it will continue indefinitely (because there will always been additional employees with expiring qualifications).
Qualification
The Qualification list filters which qualifications will send alerts to the managers. Check any alerts that should create a notification for the managers at your organisation.
Execute On
The Execute On setting allows the alert service to run on specific days of the week. In this example, the alert service will only message managers on week days.
Send By
The send by values allow you to notify the user either by Internal Message or Email. The internal message will notify the user when they next log in or send a push notification if they have the app installed while the email option sends to the email address on file. For Qualification Expiry alerts, we recommend using what is best for your staff.
Execution Offset VS Range Offset
The Execution Offset and the Range Offset allow the alert service to send alerts for qualifications expiring in the previous/next X amount of days, weeks, months or years. In this example, we have set the Range Offset to look at all qualifications expiring in the upcoming month as well as those that expired in the previous month. Any expiration dates that fall in this range will send the alert to the managers.
Message template for group
You must use the Message Template For Group section (on the right) to enter the content which will be sent to the manager. The HTML section will be sent via email while the plain text section is used for internal messages.
Email Content
The email content is what will be sent to the managers when their employees have qualifications expiring. The subject line of the alert should always reference what is being sent while the body of the alert can utilise tables to iterate over multiple employees. In the example below, the table values will print out a list of employees, qualification names, and expiration dates using Placeholders.
To learn more about formatting the email content, check out How to use the Alerts HTML email editor? (Video)
Filtering VS Recipients
The Filtering section is used to reduce the employees which will be sent to the manager (i.e. we only want the manager to get alerted when someone in their department or location requests leave). Employees can be filtered by the Location, Department, Role, Access level, Employee Type, and more.
Note: Do not tick the box to Send Alerts to Employee as this message is intended for managers
only. A separate alert can be configured to notify employees when their qualifications are
expiring.
The Recipients are the managers which will be notified of the request. This is controlled through the use of Send Groups and a new group can be added by the Add Group button. The Send Groups can also be filtered by Location, Department, Role, Access level, Employee Type, and more.
Please note that prior to version 4.8.25, you could only have a MAX of 50 users in a Send Group.