Programmatically add information to Notification E-mails

Are there any methods in the AyaNova API that would make it possible to add information to the e-mails that are sent out through the AyaNova notification generator?

Hi Adam, do you mean generate your own notification emails via code or modify the emails that are about to be sent out after AyaNova has generated them but before they are sent or modify the content of the emails dynamically as they are generated or modify the template of what AyaNova puts in the emails?

I would be most interested in modifying the existing template of what the notification e-mail sends out.

Thanks

You’re not talking about Client Notifications are you because you can already modify the message sent and use tags that are substituted on the fly by AyaNova as per:
http://www.ayanova.com/AyaNova6webHelp/using_the_client_notification_.htm?zoom_highlightsub=client%2Bnotification

The user notifications are hard coded at present (for the most part), however if you can explain what you need to do I might have an alternative for you or potentially a new feature to add.

I apologize for not being very specific. Basically, I wanted to know if it was possible to edit the contents of the e-mails sent out to AyaNova Users through the notification subscriptions.

For instance, the notification for “Workorder Item Scheduled User” currently looks like


Work order item scheduled user - (created / updated): Start Date & Time 8/9/2009 12:00 AM, Stop Date & Time 8/9/2009 12:00 PM Service Number: ####
Client: Generic Company
Item Summary: Troubleshoot IT problems
Suggested rate: Labor
Estimated quantity: 0.00000

Is there any way I can add more information from the work order to that e-mail?

Hi Adam, no it’s not possible currently. The user notifications are designed to be as small, quick and lightweight as possible and convey essential information only.

The idea being that if people need to view anything about the workorder beyond the essentials and are not in shop they can use any of the many remote access options we provide such as remoting (built in), WBI, MBI etc etc.

That being said I’ll make an entry to look at the possibility of templating the notification messages so that users can make a custom template and we’ll consider it for a future release.

The other possiblity is, if we are missing something essential for that notification, I can see about having it added to the built in message if it’s of general usefulness to others, what information exactly would you like to see added to that notification?

I understand your reasoning behind creating the e-mail templates the way that you did. However, it would be nice the Work order status subscriptions came with a little more information than they do.

For example, current Work order “Status” changed is:

Workorder - “Status” changed: Service Number 1257
Client: Generic, Inc.
Workorder status: Scheduled

Would we would like to see is

Workorder - “Status” changed: Service Number 1257
Client: Generic, Inc.
Scheduled User(s): Bob Johnson —Add Scheduled Users—
Summary: Troubleshoot IT Issues —Add Work Order Summary—
Workorder status: Scheduled

Just having that little bit of information added to ALL of the Work Order related E-mail notifications would be greatly beneficial to our company. By all means, I wouldn’t mind seeing a customizable template for notification e-mails either. I will post a request for such a feature under the wish list forum.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Hi Adam thank you for the additional info.

Note of course that beyond what we’ve discussed and because this is the developers forum I would be remiss in not mentioning that you could use the developers API to make your own notification program that includes any information you want.

Something that would run standalone and would periodically scan the workorders for changes, keep track of what has changed and what has already been notified etc. This gives you ultimate control over things.

That being said I’ve already placed an entry to look at templating the user notifications on our internal “to look at” list.

Cheers!