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Email Settings allow you to control the email types and frequency, as well as add information to the notification emails sent to task contributors. This is accessed by going to the "Email Settings" tab, and it is customizable for each step of the schedule. The Email Settings tab provides a summary of the selections.
To begin customizing the notifications for each step, click the "Configure Email Settings" hyperlink within the step.
Configure Emails
The email configuration page for a step is divided into multiple parts. Each type of notification available for the step may have the frequency modified and custom text inserted. For notifications which are one time only, such as Invitation Email, instead of frequency they may be turned on or off.
There are four notification emails which may be configured for any type of step.
- Invitation Email: A one-time notification when a participant has a new task awaiting their review and response.
- Reminder Emails: A recurring notification based on the length of time a task has been awaiting a response from a participant.
- Final Reminder Email: A one-time notification sent one day prior to the task’s due date.
- Overdue Emails: A recurring notification based on the number of days past due a task is.
Both of the recurring email types and the final reminder email will be sent at the selected email send time for the schedule. Invitation emails are sent as soon as the task becomes available.
Email Frequency
Each of the email notifications referenced above have a Send drop-down menu which allows for customization of frequency or disabling of the notification altogether. For emails which send once, the drop-down will display Yes/No. Recurring emails may be disabled, or configured to a variety of different options.
Custom Email Notification Text
The types of custom messaging that can be inserted to an email are a body message and a closing message. Rich text areas are available to write up a custom message that will be inserted in the emails. The character limit for both the body and closing custom message is 5,000. If no custom messaging is entered, or the None option is chosen, then the email will only contain the default system messaging. While the drop-down is set as None the rich text editor will be disabled, but you are still able to review any text that was added before it was disabled.
If a Body Message is used, it will be inserted between the system generated information regarding the schedule. The Closing Message, if created, will be located right after the call to action button Open Now.
Both message types may be populated from a custom snippet created within System Settings. All available custom snippets will appear in the Custom Message drop-down menu for each type. When a custom snippet is used, it will populate in the preview but will not be editable. Edits to a snippet must be made through System Settings prior to the launch of the Schedule.
Enable Digest Emails for Reviewers
Within the email settings, each schedule will have the option to configure Digest Emails for all reviewer steps. This is not enabled by default. To enable it, click on the Configure Digest Emails hyperlink and select "Yes" on the Enable Digest Email toggle as shown in the image below.
When digest emails are enabled, all reviewers in your schedule will receive an email notification per the frequency set of the number of tasks in their inbox awaiting their review and the number of tasks will be categorized by different statuses that are described in this article, Email Notification Overview. Any reviewer in a schedule can receive digest emails once they are enabled and as long as they have tasks in their inbox awaiting their review.
Since digest emails provide a comprehensive overview of tasks, individual email settings cannot be configured at the reviewer step when digest emails are enabled. This means you can enable digest emails or configure email settings at each reviewer step, but not both simultaneously in a single schedule.
Digest emails will not be sent to a reviewer until they have been assigned the first task within the schedule. This means that a reviewer must receive a task before any digest emails begin to be delivered to them. Once the first task arrives in the reviewer's inbox, they will start receiving digest emails according to the frequency that has been selected for that schedule.
For example, if the digest email frequency is configured to be weekly, the timing of each reviewer's digest email delivery is determined by when they receive their first task associated with that schedule. If a reviewer receives their first candidate submission on a Wednesday, then the following Wednesday will mark the delivery of their first digest email. After this initial digest email, the reviewer will continue to receive digest emails every week on that same day, maintaining a consistent weekly schedule based on the initial task receipt date.
Note: Digest Emails cannot be enabled post-launch, but they can be cancelled post-launch. Details on cancelling emails can be found in the section titled, "Revisions to an Active Schedule" of this article.
Preview Emails in Browser
You may preview an email from the schedule by selecting the Preview button that appears next to the Send Test Email button. When this is selected a new modal will open with a sample of the email that will be generated along with the subject line and sender information. You can preview the email for each of the four notification emails.
Send Test Email
A test email may be sent in order to review the custom email text, which is especially useful if you choose to add custom text to the base message. Once the desired formatting of the body and closing message are set up, each email notification type has a Send Test option. This option will only be available if notifications for the step are enabled, otherwise it will appear grayed out.
The Send Test option will present a message requesting up to ten email addresses where the test email should be sent. The entered email addresses should be comma delimited or each on their own line. Click Validate to proceed to the next step.
The validation modal will indicate if any issues were discovered with the list of emails provided. Once the email addresses are confirmed, click Send Test. For more information on how these parts of the email are placed, please reference our Email Notification Overview article.
When all the configuration options for a step have been confirmed, click Apply to save the changes and return to edit schedule. The step will now have an updated summary indicating the email settings which were selected. To change any of the settings for a pending schedule, return to the Email Settings page.
Revisions to an Active Schedule
Once a schedule is confirmed (open), individual email settings and Digest Emails cannot be modified further. However, if you need to cancel emails for a step or Digest Emails, this is possible. Cancelling emails is an action that cannot be undone and will stop all future scheduled reminders, final reminders and overdue alert emails from being sent. Invitation emails, however, will continue to be sent to participants for steps that have invitation emails enabled.
To cancel emails for a step, follow these steps:
- Login to Faculty Success as a Workflow Administrator.
- Navigate to the Schedule for which you wish to cancel reminder, final reminder and overdue email alters for.
- Open the schedule and go to it's "Email Settings" tab.
- From the email settings tab, locate the step for which you wish to cancel emails and click on the "Configure Email Settings" hyperlink for the step.
- At the bottom of the step's email settings, find the "Cancel All Pending Emails for this Step" area. Then toggle the "Cancel Emails" to "Yes" to cancel the emails for the step. Keep in mind that this action cannot be undone and invitation emails will continue to be sent, if enabled for the step.
- After cancelling the emails, the email settings for the step will update to display "Cancelled" for reminder, final reminder and overdue email alters, indicating that these emails will not be sent to participants going forward.