Setting Up Notification Conditions

Each notification routine defined in the Digital Storage Manager system can have an optional Notification Condition associated with it that must be met before a notification is generated. Such notification conditions are used in addition to the general Add, Delete, and Update events that are selected for the notification routine. Notification conditions may be based on the database fields defined for the Retrieval Request folder type on which the notification routine is based. Applying notification conditions to a notification routine allows you to generate a notification (or not) based on the information entered in the Retrieval Request record. For Example, you can define a notification condition that will only send a notification if the notes field in the Retrieval Request form contains a particular word.

Setting notification conditions

1. Click the Condition tab in the Notification display pane if it is not already selected.
2. Click the Condition Editor button ( ) in the Condition area of the Send Condition tab. An Additional restrictions dialog box will appear, allowing you to specify which database fields, operators, and values you want to include in the condition for the notification routine. When no condition is defined, the default value in the Additional restrictions dialog will read “None”.

1. Click the plus button ( ) to add a criterion line to the condition.

1. Select a database field for the first operand of the criteria from the database field popup. The fields available are determined by those defined for the Retrieval Requests folder type on which the notification routine is based.

Note: The operands used in criteria for an “updated” event may contain the value of a database field both before (the “old” value) and after (the “new” value) the record is updated. This allows you to send notifications based on the specific changes made to the Retrieval Request on which the notification is based. For example, you may want to send a notification when a customer changes addresses. In this case, you would set the condition so that the notification is generated only when the value of the status of a Retrieval Request is set to “Completed”. In this case, you would set the condition so that the notification is generated only when the value of the old status does not equal the value of the new status and when the new status value is set to “Completed.”

1. Select the relational operator you want to apply to the database field from the operator popup. The relation operators available depend on the database field selected, but may include: starts with, contains, does not contain, equal, not equal, less than, less than or equal, greater than or equal, and greater than.

1. Specify the second operand. This is the field or value that will be evaluated against the first operand by means of the relational operator.

To compare the value of the database field used for the first operand to a constant value, type the value in the text field for the second operand, or click the expander ( ) to the right of the text field to select a value. The values available depend on the database field selected.

To compare the value of the database field used for the first operand with the value of another field used in the second operand, click the expander ( ) to the right of the text field, select Switch to field, then select the appropriate database field. The fields available are determined by those that are defined for the Retrieval Requests folder type on which the notification routine is based. You can also switch back to entering a value in a text field by selecting “Switch to values” from the database field popup.

Note: If a field used in for an operand in the notification condition is deleted, an error notification will be sent to the Administrator, alerting him/her that the notification routine is improperly configured.

1. OPTIONAL: To add additional criteria to the condition, click the Plus button, select either AND or OR, and repeat Steps 3-6 for each additional criterion you would like to include in the condition.

note: In the Digital Storage Manager system, AND has a higher priority than OR in all conditions. For example, the condition

Criterion1
and Criterion2
or Criterion3

will be interpreted as “(Criterion1 AND Criterion2) OR Criterion3”. A notification routine with the above condition will generate a notification when Criterion1 and Criterion2 are both true, as well as when only Criterion3 is true.

If you would like the condition to be interpreted as “Criterion1 AND (Criterion2 OR Criterion3)”, you must set up the following condition:

Criterion1
and Criterion2
or Criterion1
and Criterion3

A notification routine with this condition will generate a notification only when Criterion1 is true and either Criterion2 or Criterion3 (or both) is/are true.

1. Click OK ( ). This will close the condition editor.
2. Click Save ( ). This will save the changes you have made to the notification routine.

At this point, the notification routine’s send condition has been set, and you may continue defining its remaining elements.

Related Topics

“About Notification Processing” on page 530

“Defining Notification Routines” on page 538

“Setting Up Additional Recipient Restriction Conditions” on page 547

“Using the Recipient() MetaScript Object” on page 553

“The Notification Box” on page 569