Leave Notification Maintenance

The Leave module can be configured to send automatic notifications to users to communicate information about leave requests. Notifications are setup to trigger based on the actions taken when requesting and rejecting/approving leave. Therefore, if notifications are required to be sent as part of the leave request process, the relevant notifications must be configured.

The Notifications maintenance item is located in Leave Module > Maintenance > Notifications.

There are two basic types of notifications; scheduled notifications and immediate notifications.

Scheduled notifications are notifications that are schedule to be sent at specific times. Scheduled notifications include the following message types:

reminder - sent to leave approvers as a reminder to approve leave requests by a certain time/date respectively
escalation – sent to an alternative approver if the usual approver has not approved or rejected a leave request within a specific amount of time after being submitted.

Scheduled notifications can be configured to reoccur until the corresponding leave request is submitted or approved/rejected.

Immediate notifications are notifications that are sent immediately when a specific event occurs. Immediate notifications include the following message types:

submitted - sent to the approver where the initiator submits a leave request.
rejected – sent to the initiator when an approver rejects the leave request.
approved – sent to the initiator when an approver approves a submitted leave request
recalled – sent to an approver when a leave request that has been awaiting their approval has been recalled by the initiator.

Notifications can be delivered via one or more of the following delivery methods:

email – an email message is sent to the email address of the relevant recipient
SMS – an SMS is sent to the relevant recipient's mobile telephone

When working with leave notifications, you need to be aware of the following concepts:

notification triggers
message frequency
delivery methods
grouping

These concepts are described below.

Notification Triggers

A notification trigger determines the type of event that triggers a notification. For scheduled notifications, the following triggers are available:

Reminder – for the Approver the trigger is relative to the date/time the leave request was submitted.
Escalation – the notification is triggered when a certain number of hours or days have elapsed since a leave request was submitted. The notification is sent to the Leave Administrator.

For immediate notifications, the following notification triggers are available:

Rejected – the notification is triggered when a approver rejects a leave request that has been submitted. The notification is sent to the leave initiator.
Submitted – the notification is triggered when a leave initiator submits a leave request for approval. The notification is sent to the ‘Owner’ of the Candidate that has requested the leave.
Recalled – the notification is triggered when a leave initiator recalls a leave request. The notification is sent to the ‘Owner’ of the Candidate that has requested the leave.
Approved – the notification is triggered when an approver approves a leave request. The notification is sent to the leave initiator.

Notification Triggers and Delivery Methods

The following table describes each of the Notification triggers in more detail.

Notification Trigger	Description
Submitted (Immediate)	The submitted trigger applies when an: Initiator submits a leave request for approval. Notification is sent to: The Candidate Record Owner where the Agency User has permission to 'Action (& Proxy) Leave Requests', else the notification is sent to a User with permission to 'Leave Administrator’ - where there is more than one user with this permission, the system sends the notification to the first User with the same Office as the Candidate in their Data Group.
Recalled (Immediate)	The Recalled trigger applies when an: Payee, Proxy or Administrator recalls an non-actioned leave request. Notification is sent to: The Candidate Record Owner.
Approved (Immediate)	An approved notification is sent to the Leave Request initiator.
Rejected (Immediate)	The Rejected trigger applies when an: Approver rejects the leave request. Notification is sent to: The Leave Request initiator.
Reminder (Scheduled)	The Reminder trigger applies when: A request has been submitted and not actioned within the delay period defined in the notification. Notification is sent to: The Initiator and the Candidate Record Owner.
Escalation (Scheduled)	The Escalation trigger applies where a request has not been actioned within the delay frequency period applied to the notification. Notification is sent to: To determine whom to send the notification (escalatee), the system checks the Payee’s ‘Office’, then finds Agency Users with permission to ‘Leave Request Administrator’ who belong to the same Data Group as the Payee’s ‘Office’. If there is a pool of escalatees, all of them will get the escalation.

Message Frequency

When creating a scheduled notification, you must specify delivery frequency parameters, consisting of a mandatory delay frequency and an optional reoccurrence frequency. The delay frequency determines when the notification is sent and the reoccurrence frequency determines if and how often the notification is resent.

Delay and reoccurrence frequencies can be define in terms of hours or days. The delay frequency can be a negative value.

For reminder notifications where the recipient is a Leave Request Approver, the delay frequency is relative to the date the request was submitted. For example, if the submitted date falls on 18 July 2010 and the delay frequency is set to -2 days, a reminder message will be sent to the leave approver on 20 July 2010.

For escalation notifications the delay frequency is defined relative to the time and date of a leave request being submitted. For example, if a request is submitted at 10:00 am on 18 July 2010 and the delay frequency is set to 1 day, an escalation notification will be sent to the leave administrator if the request has not been approved or rejected by 10:00 am on 19 July 2010.

The reoccurrence frequency for reminder and escalation notifications is defined relative to the last instance of the notification being sent. For example, if the reoccurrence frequency for an escalation message is set to 2 hours and the first escalation message is sent at 10:00am on a given day, another escalation message will be sent at 12:00pm on the same day and will continue to be resent every two hours until the corresponding leave request is approved or rejected.

Delivery Methods

A notification can be sent to the relevant leave request participant via the following delivery methods:

Email – sends the notification as an email message to the email address of the participant
SMS – sends the notification as an SMS message to the mobile telephone number of the participant

One or more of the abovementioned delivery methods, and corresponding notification template, must be selected when creating a new notification.

Grouping

Grouping intervals can be used to prevent continual sending of large number of notifications to recipients.

For example, the leave approver may approve the leave of a large number of payees. If a separate notification is sent each time a payee submits a request for approval, the approver may be inundated with notifications that prompt the approval of each leave request.

By using grouping intervals, all notifications that have been triggered within a given period of time are grouped into a single notification which is delivered only at the end of the corresponding interval. The group intervals can be set at 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours.

For example, if the interval is set to 6 hours, notifications will be sent at six-hourly intervals throughout each 24 hour period. Therefore, a recipient would receive a maximum of 4 notifications on any given day and these notifications would be delivered at the following times of day:

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

In this example, all notifications that are triggered between 00:00 and 06:00 are grouped into a single notification and sent to the recipient at 06:00. All notifications that are triggered between 06:00 and 12:00 are grouped and sent to the recipient at 12:00 and so on.

For scheduled notifications, it is still necessary to define the delivery frequency even if grouping intervals will be used to group the delivery of notifications. This is because the delivery frequency triggers the generation of the relevant notification.