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    Notifications and Reminders

    Umbraco Plumber uses Notifications to allow you to configure email notifications for all workflow activities for the backoffice.

    From the Settings view in the Workflow section, the Notifications tab provides access to the following:

    • Send notifications: If you wish to send email notifications to approval groups, you can enable it here. If your users are active in the backoffice, email notifications might not be required.

    • Workflow email: Provide a sender address for email notifications. This is a mandatory field.

    • Reminder delay (days): Set a delay in days for sending reminder emails for outstanding workflow processes. Set to 0 to disable reminder emails.

    • Edit site URL: The URL for the editing environment (including schema - http[s]). This is a mandatory field.

    • Site URL: The URL for the public website (including schema - http[s]). This is a mandatory field.

    • Email templates: Configure which users receive emails for which workflow actions and modify the templates for those emails.

      Notifications tab in the Workflow Section

    Notifications

    Notification emails use HTML templates which render information from the HtmlEmailModel type which lives in the Plumber.Core.Models.Email namespace. While it is possible to modify the email templates from the backoffice, it is recommended to make changes via an IDE of your choice.

    The HtmlEmailModel contains the following fields:

    Fields Data Type Description
    WorkflowType WorkflowType An enum value containing either 1 or 2 for Publish and Unpublish respectively.
    ScheduledDate DateTime If a scheduled date exists for the workflow, it is found here.
    Summary IHtmlString A pre-generated representation of the current workflow state.
    CurrentTask WorkflowTaskViewModel The view model data for the current workflow task. Contains a lot of useful data, best explored via Intellisense.
    Instance WorkflowInstanceViewModel The view model data for the current workflow. Best explored via Intellisense.

    The HtmlEmailBase contains the following fields:

    Fields Data Type Description
    SiteUrl string The public URL of your site.
    NodeName string The name of the node from the current workflow.
    Type string The workflow type including the scheduled date (if exists).
    EmailType EmailType An enum value representing the current email type that relates directly to the workflow task type.
    To EmailUserModel The model defining the receiver of the email.
    Email string The user's email address or a group address (if a group email is being sent).
    Name Name The user's name.
    Language string The user's language.
    Id int The user's ID or group ID (when sending to a group email address).
    IsGroupEmail bool Is the email being sent to a generic group email address?

    Umbraco Plumber provides Settings for determining who receives emails at which stages of a workflow. While these are set to default values during installation, it is recommended to update your Notifications Settings to better suit your installation needs. Emails can be sent to:

    • All: All the participants in all workflow stages (previous and current).
    • Admin: The admin user.
    • Author: The user who initiated the workflow.
    • Group: All members of the group assigned to the current task.

    Duplicate users are removed from email notifications.

    By default, all emails are sent to the Group. This might not always be an ideal situation. For example: cancelled workflows would be best sent to the Author only, likewise with rejected.

    It might be useful to notify All the participants of completed workflows but even this may be excessive. Depending on your website, you can adjust the best configuration.

    Reminders

    Umbraco Plumber uses a reminder email system to prompt editors to complete the pending workflows. Reminders are sent using Umbraco's internal task scheduler, every 24 hours after an initial delay. For example, setting the Reminder delay (days) value to 2 in the Workflow Settings section will allow pending workflows to sit for 2 days. After that reminder emails will be sent every 24 hours to all members of the group assigned to the pending workflow task.

    The emails use a similar model to the notification emails, also inheriting from HtmlEmailBase. In addition to the inherited fields, HtmlReminderEmailModel includes:

    Fields Data Type Description
    OverdueTasks IList A list containing all the overdue tasks assigned to the current user.
    TaskCount int The count of overdue tasks assigned to the current user.