Keep on top of workflows with notifications and reminders

Enterprise plans

Set up notifications and reminders when you create a workflow to keep respondents and other stakeholders up to date on response progression, keep reviewers on top of responses, and generate custom documents as a response moves through a workflow.

Notifications and reminders are sent via email. Make sure your staff have whitelisted OpenForms in their email clients' spam and spoof protection. 

Notifications

Notifications are email alerts sent when responses enter a particular workflow stage.

Use notifications to alert reviewers that a response is ready for their attention, or respondents know about the status of their submissions.

Notifications are a great way to send respondents and internal departments custom documents such as permits and certificates when a responses is fully approved and transitioning to a final step.

Reminders are sent when responses have been in the review center for a number of days without being actioned. These are emailed to the step's assigned reviewers.

Set up notifications

1. Create a workflow.
2. When you add or edit a transition, select the Notifications tab. 
   
3. Select Add a notification.
   

   

   This will open a new notification dialog for that transition.

   
4. Select whether the recipients are the reviewers for that step, or the form respondent. 

   
5. Add any additional recipients. 
   

   
   Separate each additional recipient's email address with a comma. 
6. Edit the Email subject and Email body. 

   

   The default email body uses answer piping to populate basic details about the response, and includes a link to the review center, usable by assigned reviewers. Use the Pipe answer drop-down to include any additional details you'd like to add based on the form's fields, metadata, or workflow elements.
   If you are addressing the notification to the form respondent, make sure to change the default text to something appropriate to an outside viewer, removing links to the review center and workflow stage.

   
7. Select Add attachments to attach the default response PDF or custom documents to your notification. These will be generated on demand when this notification is triggered and sent as email attachments.
8. Select Save notification. 
9. Congratulations! You've added a notification to your transition. Add as many notifications as your transition needs.
   
   
   

   

   Select Delete from the '...' menu for a notification if you need to delete it.
   You may need different notifications with appropriate email body text for form respondents, reviewers and other internal stakeholders, respectively. Each step can only have one notification addressed to a respondent.
10. Complete work on your transition in the Overview tab, if necessary, and Save the transition. 
11. Repeat as necessary for any additional transitions. 
12. Save and Publish your form. 

Set up reminders

1. Create a workflow.
2. When you add or edit a standard step, select the Reminders tab
   
   
3. Select Add a reminder.
   
   

   This will open a new reminder dialog for that stage.
   

   
4. Choose when the reminder will be sent and specify any additional recipients you'd like to BCC. 
   
   
   Separate each additional recipient's email address with a comma.
   The step's assigned reviewers are automatically included in each reminder. There's no need to add them as recipients.
5. Edit the Email subject and Email body. 
   
   The default email body uses answer piping to populate basic details about the response awaiting attention. Use the Pipe answer drop-down to include any additional details you'd like to add based on the form's fields, metadata, or workflow elements.
6. Use the Add attachments button to append the default response PDF or any custom documents generated from form data to the reminder.
   The default response PDF - a summary of the entire response - is useful when sending reminders to recipients that aren't OpenForms users (so they can view the response without logging in). 
7. Select Save Reminder.
8. Congratulations! You've added a reminder to your step. Add as many additional reminders as your step needs. 
   
   
   Use the "..." menu to edit or delete reminders.
   For important forms, it's a good idea to create multiple, escalating reminders. Alert reviewers in the first instance, then add management staff as recipients to subsequent reminders.
9. Complete filling out the standard step details in the Overview tab, if necessary, and Save the step.
10. Repeat as necessary for any additional steps.
11. Save and Publish your form.

What's next?

• Preventing OpenForms emails being filtered by your spam and spoof protection
• Use the review center to process responses