Scheduled Alerts

Scheduled Alerts are alerts that are executed according to a schedule specified by the user. They are a type of process that is submitted to a process server. They can be scheduled, submitted to a profile, and maintained in the Process Server applications.

For more information, see the Alerts Overview and the Process Server Overview.

Scheduled alerts are based on the assignment record and not on the workflow itself. The scheduled alerts created by the insertion of step actions on the Workflow Steps tab can be viewed by selecting Administration » Alerts » Scheduled Alerts. These alerts are scheduled to occur at a certain time of the day and then process all assignment records looking for the conditions defined in this view to be met.

The following notifications are scheduled alerts:

Reminder notices
Past due notifications
Management Escalation

Since these notifications are working off of the assignment record, they include the following tables in the Select Fields dialog box:

Project
Control account
Workflow
Parent

To view the scheduled alerts created by the step actions on the Workflow Steps tab,select Administration » Alerts » Scheduled Alerts, then select Area = Assignment. The description for each scheduled alert indicates the step, the notification type, and the workflow type.

How Often Should a Scheduled Alert Run?

When you schedule an alert to determine if today is the day that something should happen, Deltek highly recommends that you schedule the alert to reoccur every day. For example, if progress entries are supposed to be created 5 days before the period end date, the scheduled alert needs to check every day to see if today's date is 5 days before the period end date. If you select to run the scheduled alert weekly, for example, the scheduled alert might not run on the day that evaluates true for the condition: Is today's date 5 days before the period end date?

You define the alert schedule on the Schedule dialog box Recurrance tab.

Reminder Notifications

Reminder notifications let the assignee know when their assignment is due.

The default reminder notification uses the Workflow field: due date table to tell the assignee the due date of their assignment.
The default notification for management escalation uses both the assignment date (table: Workflow field: due date) and the workflow due date (table: Parent field: due date). This gives the manager a better sense of the “drop dead” date.

In summary, when the notification is a scheduled notification, do the following:

Select the Workflow table for the assignee’s due date.
Select the Parent table for the workflow due date.

The Scheduled Alerts Form

There are two grids on the Alerts form:

The Alerts grid is when to initiate the alert. For example, when do I need a schedule or a database update.
The Actions grid is what actions need to be performed when the alert is executed.

Further conditions can be applied on both alert and action level.

For example, when scheduled alerts are created automatically by adding step actions to the Workflow Steps tab in Workflow Type Configuration, the conditions are specific to the workflow type and step. This allows each workflow type and step to be maintained separately. It is possible to remove the past due notification from all steps and just create a single scheduled alert that operates on all steps of the workflow type.

When a record meets all of the conditions in the Alert grid, all of the actions are processed for that alert. The conditions in the Alerts grid should filter as much as possible to help performance. For example, the Alert grid should contain conditions to prevent the actions from being processed when the record is closed or suspended.

Tip: Consider setting up separate scheduled alerts that notify the workflow creator of the following:

Which open workflows have a due date in x days.
Which open workflows are past due.
Which workflows have been made inactive or suspended.
Which workflows have been in the same workflow status for x.

Default Automated Scheduled Processes

There are some system-generated scheduled processes (for example, Delete Expired Archive Reports) that do not display in Scheduled Alerts. For more information about these processes, see Default Processes in the System Queue.