Web Interface - Settings - Appearance - Custom Notifications

Whereas the Items Displayed settings allow you to turn on and off specific components of a notification, they do not let you control the actual text. The Custom Notifications feature allows you override the standard template with a customized version for all users within an organization, or for just a specific group.

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List of all defined Custom Notifications

By clicking on the Settings | Appearance | Notification: Custom link, you get to a master list of custom notifications you have defined for your organization. From here you can create new notifications, clone notifications you have already created, edit the content of notifications, and enable or disable notifications for use within your organization.

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The main list of notifications has several columns:

Name: The unique name for this notification. This is your helpful-hint as to what purpose you have for this notification.
Template: The system-defined notification template that this one overrides. The list of system templates can be found below in the Adding a Notification section. See the Web Interface - Settings - Appearance - Custom Notification - Templates page for the complete list of templates.
Apply: This is a flag that says whether the custom notification is has been turned on or "applied" to the organization. If the column displays the word Org, then the notification has been enabled for the entire organization. If it is blank, the custom notification is still in draft stage or has been applied to a specific group.
Language: For systems with multi-language support enabled, you will see a Language column which identifies language for which the notification is used. You can customize email notifications for each supported language.
Action:
- Clone: Allows you to clone a notification as a starting point for a new one.
- Edit: Takes you to the editor for changing the content of the notification. You can do the same thing by clicking on the Name field.
- Delete: Deletes this notification (after confirmation.)

An "add" link allows you to create new notifications based on standard templates.

Adding a Notification

To add a new custom notification, click on the "add" link at the bottom of the custom notification list.

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Name: Name your custom notification here. Names have to be unique, and they can be used to describe your purpose for the notification, for example: "Dept password change".
Template: Choose one of the standard templates from the drop-down list. See the Web Interface - Settings - Appearance - Custom Notification - Templates page for details on all the templates.

Press the "Add Notification" button to advance to the editing screen.

When you add a new notification, a standard "template" notification is built and presented for editing. At the time you add the notification, the "Items Displayed" settings currently in effect will be used to select the features enabled in the custom notification. For example, if the Comment Field option is set in the "Items Displayed" settings when you add a file or message notification, the new notification will include the comment.

Cloning a Notification

Once you have a working custom notification, you may want to create a slightly different version without starting from scratch, and without changing the original. You can select an existing custom notification from the list and click on the "Clone" link.

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This is very similar to "Adding a Notification", but notice that the template is fixed, you only get a field for specifying the name of the new notification. After you press the "Add Cloned Notification" button, you are presented with the edit screen containing a copy of the original notification.

Editing a Notification

Immediately after adding or cloning a new notification, or if you click on the "Edit" link in the notification list, you get the editing display. The screen is broken up here and each part is described separately.

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Name: You may change the descriptive name of the notification.
Template: Once you have added a notification, you may not change the template type. It is displayed here for reference.
Apply to whole Organization: When you are ready to activate a custom notification you can check this box and the custom notification will be used for all emails of the template type. This toggles on the "Org" tag in the Notification list screen.

Subject: This is the subject line of the email sent out with the custom notification. You may edit the text of the subject line, including the use of macros as described below.

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Body: This is the body of the email sent out with the custom notification. It contains text that is included verbatim that you may change as it suits your specific needs. It also contains three types of macros enclosed in square brackets, ([]). Some macros are direct inserts of information available at the time of the notification, for example, [Username], or [FileID]. Other macros are used to provide a rudimentary meta-language for creating if-then-else decisions and for-loop structures. Some macros are available for controlling the appearance, usually of HTML-formatted emails. Macros are discussed in depth on the Web Interface - Settings - Appearance - Custom Notification - Macros page.
Update Notification button: Any changes to the header, subject or body of a notification are saved when you press the Update button.

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A example of the last-saved version of your custom notification is displayed as it would appear when sent as an email in HTML format. The subject is displayed separately from the body of the email. Generic sample data is filled into the message to show how the macro fields would be processed. A "Send Test Email to Me" button lets you send an actual email to yourself with the sample data. The email subject of the test email will always be prefixed with the words "TEST EMAIL:". Every time you make a change to the subject or body of the custom notification and press the "Update Notification" button, the display will refresh to show you the results of your changes.

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An example of the same notification as it would appear sent as an email in TEXT format is also displayed. For the Summary File Notifications, which have completely different HTML and TEXT versions, only one or the other is displayed. A similar "Send Test TEXT Email to Me" button can be used to send a sample in text mode to your email address.