Notifications

An important feature of Visual Collaboration is the ability to notify users when they have new messages available to read. Notification is handled in two ways, directly within the Aras Innovator client, and through email.

Notification capability requires the installation of the Aras Agent Service and the Conversion Server. See the Conversion Server Setup Guide and Installation Guide (for Agent Service) for details.

Once the Agent Service has been installed, you must configure the conversion.config file located within the AgentService folder. The following additions must be made to the file:

<ProcessingCycles>

<cycle DB="database” User="user” Interval="20000" MaxBatch="5" />

<cycle DB="database” User="user” Interval="20000" MaxBatch="1" ConversionRuleName="SSVC.Email.Digest.Notification.Rule” />

<cycle DB="database” User="user” Interval="5000" MaxBatch="50" ConversionRuleName="SSVC.Notification.Rule” />

</ProcessingCycles>

Substitute the appropriate values for your environment for the items in blue.

Once these edits have been made, restart the Agent Service.

There is a “master switch” available only to Administrators, which turns on (or off) the overall Visual Collaboration Notification mechanism. This is in the Actions menu as shown in Figure 27.

The administrator can control the polling interval for notifications. This is set by a Variable named MessageCheckInterval. The value is set in milliseconds, with the default of 900000 (15 minutes).

Preference settings for notifications are contained within the Secure Social tab of the Preferences ItemType. Options include:

• Notification within the web client
• Notification by email on every message
• Notification by email as a digest

By setting these values for the World identity, the administrator can set the default values for all users. Users do not access the Preferences ItemType directly.

When notifications are enabled and the user has selected the option to see notifications in the web client, the notifications will appear in the Notifications button of the Aras Innovator client.

If the user clicks on the pop-up notification, they will be redirected to their My Discussions screen to see the new messages.

Use of email notifications requires the general setup of email capability within Aras Innovator. If you have any questions about setting up an email server with Aras Innovator, please contact Aras Support at support@aras.com.

Configuration of email notifications specifically for Visual Collaboration is done in the Secure Social tab of the Preferences ItemType for the World Identity.

Settings include:

Subject line for single notifications

The text to display in the subject line for emails sent on a per-message basis

Description text for single notifications

The text to display in the email message body for emails sent on a per-message basis

Subject line for digest notifications

The text to display in the subject line for digest emails

Description text for digest notifications

The text to display in the email message body for digest emails

Time interval for digest notifications (hours)

The time interval (in hours) at which digest emails will be sent. Note that this interval must be the same for all users that have chosen to receive digest emails.

If users have enabled one or both types of email notification, and have an email address defined for them, they will receive emails that look as follows:

Single emails

Digest emails

Some details have been removed in the email content, compared to the corresponding live content in the web client, such as icons and thumbnails.