The system sends different email reminder messages to VendorPanel users regarding records such as contracts, procurement plans, evaluations, and approvals.

1. Event-based reminders - These notifications are activated by certain events, such as when a user submits a request for approval, prompting the approvers to review and approve the submission.
2. Time-based reminders - These notifications are triggered by dates, like sending a reminder to the user two weeks before a client meeting. See 'Form-based reminders using email templates' and 'Custom email content'. 
3. Digest emails - These notifications are sent out weekly containing a list that meets a defined criteria, such as a list of all pending approval submissions. See 'Digest Emails'.

Accessing the Email Reminder Settings

These are managed by the Email Reminder Settings, which are accessible in the bottom-right corner of the Home page.

They are sorted and categorised into Recurring and Once-Off reminders. See 'Timing'.

You can either use the textbox under the 'Name' field to filter for the reminder you're looking for, or you can scroll through the list.

Managing an Email Reminder

To open the settings of the reminder, click on the 'View' button.

In the following explanation, we will be managing a reminder that is sent leading up to the end date of a contract.

In the settings you will find the following tabs:

Details

The internal name and description of the reminder are defined here. These do not surface in the message that gets delivered.

Most importantly, on this tab, you can decide whether to enable or disable the reminder so that it doesn’t get sent out.

This section also lets you specify the form or record related to the notification and whether to use custom email content or an email template. This will be explained further in 'Notification' section.

For our contract expiry reminder, the name is set to 'Contract Expiring' and cannot be changed as it is a pre-defined reminder.

The description remains at its default value, detailing when and how often notifications will be sent. This notification is associated with the Contract form, and an email template will be used for the content.

Timing

In this section, you can review and manage when and how often the reminder is sent.

When to send reminders

The 'Filter' will be determined by VendorPanel and it's unlikely you'll need to change this. This determines what triggers this reminder to be sent.

'Reminder Frequency' is where you specify whether it should be a single reminder (once-off) or if multiple reminders are sent over a specific period of time.

For our contract expiry reminder, the filter will specifically target contracts that are in a status of 'active', as we do not need to be notified of contracts that have already expired or closed. Additionally, it is going to send out multiple reminders.

Start Date

In this section, we are determining when we want this reminder to start. It can start on a specific date, or be based on a date listed on the record itself and determined from there.

For our contract expiry reminder, we are basing this off the 'current end date' on the contract and we want the reminder to start 21 days before the end date.

Frequency

'Recurrence' and 'End date type' are only relevant if your reminder will be sent out multiple times. Here, you will define how often the reminder will be sent and when they should stop sending.

For our contract expiry reminder, notifications will be sent weekly, either indefinitely or until the contract is renewed or closed. This is due to the filter being configured to apply only to contracts with an 'active' status. Refer to 'When to send reminders' section.

Notification

Here, you can define who will receive the email notification and review the content of the email they will receive.

Reminder Recipients

The 'Recipients' of the notifications can include users with accounts in the system, specific email addresses, or a role defined in the context record that triggers the notification. Additionally, you optionally define 'CC', 'BCC' and 'ReplyTo' recipients here.

For our contract expiry reminder, notifications will be sent to the user appointed as the 'Contract Manager' for the contract.

Email Content

This section is where you can specify the content of the notification that will be sent to the recipients.

These are three types of contents that an email notification can have:

1. Form-based reminders using email templates

The content of the emails can be defined using pre-defined email templates that are provided by VendorPanel as part of the standard offering. Email templates and their content can only be created or modified by VendorPanel.

For our contract expiry reminder, we will use a pre-defined 'Contract Expiry' email template for the content of the email notification.

2. Custom email content

This option is available if you wish to customize the email content to suit your needs. To enable this, make sure to set 'Email content' on the 'Details' tab to 'Custom email content.' This will allow you to define the subject and body of the email in this section using plain text and standard HTML/CSS styling.

You also have the option to include a report of data from the system in the notification content however, this is a different type of email content that we will discuss in the next section.

3. Digest emails

In-system reports provide extensive visibility, but users must actively review them to access the information. To improve this visibility, we've developed a tool that sends a tabular report via email, offering a high degree of customization for timing and content.

Setting up these reports requires a solid understanding of the system, making this tool primarily suitable for Admins and System Builders.

This tool can be used to create various types of email-based reports, including:

• Contracts due to expire in a specified period
• Meetings held during the last period
• All approvals completed in the last period

Additionally, emails can be tailored to show information specific to the recipient, such as:

• My pending approvals
• My upcoming contract milestones

These are just basic examples—the reports possible with this tool can vary widely and can be built on any data available in the system.

One limitation to be aware of is that the report must be referring to information stored on a single form.

With that in mind, we will use the example of a digest email for active contracts assigned to a contract manager to explain how to set up digest emails.

Setting up digest emails

Let's start by selecting 'Custom email content' as the 'Email Content' type on 'Details' tab then selecting 'Include a report of data from the system' from the 'Email Content' section. 

Just like custom email contents, you are given the option to define the subject line and content of the email. 

You will notice that there is a read-only section where the 'Report content' should be appears. This will be populated with a table of data once the email notification is triggered.

For now, you can specify the email sign-off in the 'Content after report' section. If left unchanged, it will default to "Kind regards, VendorPanel."

Targeted Report Data

Here, you can customize the report data included in the email to show only what is relevant to the recipient. In this section, you will specify which user from the context record to base the report on and whether they should receive these tailored digest emails.

For our active contract digest email example, the report will be targeted towards active contracts where the user is assigned the 'contract manager' role. They will receive a digest email containing a report of all of their active contracts.

Reports

Another tab that is now available to you is the 'Report' tab. This section allows you to format the table to be included in the email notification. You can specify which fields from the context form to include, choose headings to use instead of the field names, set the column widths, and determine how the values should be displayed. You can also choose to include a link to the record related to the specific data. This will appear as a hyperlink labelled 'View' on the first column of each row. Finally, you can specify which column(s) to sort the data by and whether to sort them in ascending or descending order.

Once you are done, you can preview the report by clicking on the 'Apply Changes' button.

For our active contract digest email example, we will be including a report containing the status, contract title and number, vendor and total contract value of the contract. We will sort the data by the vendor's ABN in descending order. Additionally, we want to display the 'View' link so the contract manager can easily access the active contract.