Creating notifications

E-mail notifications are used to inform users, both Service Manager and external, about upcoming milestones as well as expiring licenses and con­tracts. The IT Asset Management Pack adds an e-mail notification capability to Service Manager that can be configured to provide notifications within any number of days or months before an expiry or effective date.

NOTE:

Notifications are configured independently from Contract Administration Set­tings. The latter provides visual indicators for expired contracts. A notification has no affect on the Contract Administration Settings. It is therefore possible to set your notifications for expired contracts to be different than those of the visual indicators.

Before you begin creating notifications

Set up the following, in the order shown, before you create a notification:

1. Configure a notification channel to send the e-mail through, including the port and return address. Refer to the Service Manager online help for more details about enabling a channel.

2. Create an e-mail template for the notification, with a subject and a body. The class of template you create must match the type of contract that you are creating notifications for.

3. Ensure that there is an Active Directory connector created so you can select recipients for the notifications. Refer to the Service Manager online help for more details about setting up an Active Directory connec­tor.

4. Subscribe to the notification (for yourself or for others).

Creating an e-mail template

You need to create an e-mail template for each class of notification. For example, if the template is for expiring Hardware Maintenance & Support Agreements, then you need to create a template specifically for Hardware Maintenance & Support contracts. If the template is for expiring Lease Agreements, then you need to create a template for lease schedules.

The template possibilities are as follows:

• Disposal Contracts

• Hardware Maintenance & Support Contracts

• Lease Schedules

• Warranty Contracts

• Software Maintenance Agreements

• Software License Agreements

• Software Licenses

As you can see, hardware notifications are all based on the contract, which is a mostly hidden subset of a hardware agreement. Software notifications are based on the agreement itself. Always match the class chosen in the tem­plate, with the object being tracked by the notification. For example, choose a Disposal Contract as the class and its corresponding Disposal Contract object when creating the notification. Do not choose Disposal Agreement as the class and Disposal Contract as the object being tracked.

To create an e-mail template for a notification on an expiring con­tract:

1. Go to the Administration workspace and click Notifications > Templates.

2. In the Tasks pane, click Create E-Mail Template. The Create E-Mail Notification Template wizard opens at the General page.

3. Complete the fields on the General page:

4. Notification template name:  Enter a name for the template. Give it a name that you will recognize when selecting it for a subscription, such as E-Mail Template for Expiring Hardware Maintenance & Support Contracts.

   Description: Enter an optional description for the template.

   Targeted class:  Click Browse to select a class for the template. The class must match the type of agreement or contract chosen in the Provance Notification wizard. You need to be particularly careful with hardware, where you must select the contract instead of the agreement. With Milestones on any agreement, the class is always Milestone. For example, if the template is for Hardware Maintenance & Support Con­tracts, then select that as the class. If the template is for Lease Schedules, select that as the class. You may need to change the View to All basic classes in order to see all of the available classes.

5. In the Management Pack field, select the Provance Core Configuration Management Pack. You can store the template in the Default Management Pack, but doing so creates a dependency between the Default Manage­ment Pack and the Provance IT Asset Management Pack, which will result in an error if you later uninstall the IT Asset Management Pack.

6. Click Next. The Template Design page opens.

7. Complete the fields on the Template Design page:

8. Send as HTML:  Select this option if you wish the e-mail to be written in HTML.

   Message subject:  The subject line of the e-mail. Enter a subject that will be recognizable, such as Expiring Maintenance & Support Contracts.

   Message body:The body of the e-mail. Enter any descriptive free form text to introduce the recipient to the content of the notification. Click Insert to add predefined content from the class. For instance, you can add the Description field content (name given to the contract), the Expira­tion Date, the Effective Date, and the Agreement Number. All of this would be important information for the recipient. The properties you can insert will differ slightly depending on the type of contract you have selected.

   NOTE:

   Agreement properties will not appear in an e-mail unless you select the Contains Contract class. For example, to have the Agreement Number, Description and Status appear in the e-mail, select as the Related Class, Contains Disposal Contract.

   Encoding: Select an encoding that corresponds to your environment.

   Urgency: Select an urgency flag for the e-mail.

   Language: Select a language that corresponds to your user’s environ­ment.

9. Click Next. The Summary page opens.

10. Review your template settings and make any necessary changes by going back to the applicable page in the wizard.

11. NOTE:

    Only some properties of the template can be edited after you create it. It is best to ensure that the template has been set up properly at this point, than to edit it after creation.

12. When you are satisfied with the template, click Create.

Creating a subscription to a notification

To create a subscription to the notification:

1. Go to the Administration workspace and click Notifications > All Provance Notifications.

2. In the Tasks pane, click Create Provance Notification to create an e-mail notification. The Provance Notification wizard opens.

3. On the Objects Tracked page, select the object that the notification will track for you: a software agreement, a hardware contract (if it is to track a hardware-related agreement), a software license or a milestone of an agreement. For more details about milestones, see Using milestones.

4. If the notification is for an agreement or contract, select the type. The type and the Targeted Class on the E-mail Notification Template wizard, must be identical.

5. Click Next. The Details page opens.

6. Complete the following fields on the Details page:

7. Notification Name: The name you wish to give the notification.

   Description:  An optional detailed description of the notification and its purpose.

   Send notification:  The number of days or months that you should be notified before the expiry date or, in the case of a milestone, the effective date.

   Notification Frequency:  The number of notifications that should be sent every day or month.

8. Click Next. The Group Selection page opens.

9. On the Group Selection page select the group to which the notifications will be sent. Groups of users can be set up from the Library > Groups workspace.

10. Click Next. The Template page opens.

11. To select an e-mail template click Select. The Select E-mail Notification Template form opens.

12. NOTE:

    If you do not see your e-mail template, there may be a mismatch between the class and the agreement or the contract chosen. The software agree­ment or hardware contract selected on the Objects Tracked page must match that of the class selected in the e-mail template.

13. Select a template in the Templates list and click OK. The name of the tem­plate is added to the page.

14. Click Next. The Recipient page opens.

15. Click Add. The Select objects form opens.

16. In the Filter by Class field, select a filter. Choose whichever filter suits your needs:

17. Active Directory User: Displays all users in your active directory.

    Domain User or Group: Displays all users and groups in the domain. 

    Active Directory Group:  Displays the users and their groups in your active directory.

    Active Directory User or Group:  Displays the groups of users and users in your active directory.

18. Select one or more recipients for the notification and click Add. The users are added to the Select Objects list.

19. Click OK. The Specify Recipients page opens.

20. Click Next to review a summary of the subscription.

21. Click Create to complete the notification subscription.

22. Click Close to close the wizard.

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