| Previous | Next |  | Contents | Index | Glossary

## Sending Notification Messages

The Send( ) or SendGroup( ) API are called by the Workflow Engine when it encounters a notification activity. These APIs do the following:

- Check that the performer role of the notification activity is valid.

- Identify the notification preference for of the performer role.

- Look up the message attributes for the message.

- If a message attribute is of source SEND, the Send() or SendGroup( ) API retrieves its value from the item type attribute that the message attribute references. If the procedure cannot find an item type attribute, it uses the default value of the message attribute, if available. The Subject and Body of the message may include message attributes of source SEND, which the Send( ) or SendGroup( ) API token replaces with each attribute's current value when creating the notification.

- If a message includes a message attribute of source RESPOND, the Send( ) or SendGroup() API checks to see if it has a default value assigned to it. The procedure then uses these RESPOND attributes to create the default response section of the notification.

- 'Construct' the notification content by inserting relevant information into the Workflow Notification tables.

- Update the notification activity's status to 'NOTIFIED' if a response is required or to 'COMPLETE' if no response is required.

> Note: If a notification activity sends a message that is for the performer's information only (FYI), where there are no RESPOND message attributes associated with it, the notification activity gets marked as complete as soon as the Notification System delivers the message.

> Note: In the case of a voting activity, the status is updated to 'WAITING' instead of 'NOTIFIED'. See: Special Handling of Voting Activities

If the performer role of a notification has a notification preference of MAILTEXT, MAILHTML, MAILATTH or SUMMARY, the notification is flagged with the corresponding value in the Notification table. The Notification Mailer, which polls the Notification table for these flags, then generates an e-mail version of that notification and sends it to the performer. See: Implementing the Notification Mailer.

Users who view their notifications from the Notifications Web page, regardless of their notifications preferences, are simply querying the Workflow Notification tables from this interface.

A notification recipient can perform one of four actions with the notification:

- Respond to the notification or close the notification if it does not require a response. See: Processing a Notification Response.

- Forward the notification to another role. See: Forwarding a Notification.

- Transfer ownership of the notification to another role. See: Transferring a Notification.

- Ignore the notification and let it time out. See: Processing a Timed Out Notification.

| Previous | Next |  | Contents | Index | Glossary