Custom Alerts Based on Project or Register Attributes

Modified on Fri, 13 Jun at 11:12 AM

Alerts can be configured to be sent when specific criteria are met. For example:

Send an alert when the project status is set to red
Send an alert when a register item’s due date is approaching
Send an alert when the project actual spend exceeds the approved budget

These alerts are configured under Admin | System | Alerts | Custom

Two types of alerts can be configured:

Project – alerts check for project attributes such as status or stage. These alerts can check any custom field values too. The formula editor for project alerts uses the same formula editor as used for custom fields.
Register – alerts check the values in register entries. The formula editor for register alerts uses the same formula editor as register calculated fields.

Alert Settings

Field	Purpose	Notes
Description	A unique name for the alert
Type	The type of alert – register or project
Register	The register to send alerts for	Only appears when type is register
Condition	The formula that must resolve to true for the alert to trigger	The editor depends on whether register or project is selected The condition must return a Boolean value
Trigger Alert	Once or Daily	See frequency below
To	The user(s) who will receive the alert	This can be a specific user, a user with a specific role or a value from a user dropdown on the project/register
Specify Address	Allows for manual entry of an email address	This option allows for circumstances where the alerts need to go to a group mailbox for example instead of specified user(s)
Subject	Subject line for the email alert
Body	Content of the email alert	Rich text is supported
Link	Choose to include a link in the email back to the item in PPM
Project Attribute / Register Attribute	Optionally, an alert can update a project or register attribute depending on the alert type	For example, you could have an alert that checks for a financial overspend and, if triggered, also updates the project status to red
Update To	If a project or register attribute is selected, choose the value to assign to that attribute when the alert is triggered
Active	Enable the alert	You can uncheck this box to temporarily disable an alert instead of having to delete it and recreate it later

Frequency

Alerts can be configured to run once or to run daily.

Once: The alert is triggered once when the condition is true and then not again. Use this option when you want to alert users to an event but not continue to remind them.

Daily: The alert is triggered for as long as the condition remains true. Typically, you would use this option when a work item (register entry) is overdue. The user will receive an alert daily until they action the item.

Notes:

Unlike the standard alerts for tasks or register items, these alerts are not triggered immediately. They are executed when a scheduled job (Admin | System | Jobs | Alerts runs.
Once an alert is configured it will execute against all projects and register data. For example, if you configure an alert to run when the status of a project is set to red, the first time the alerts job runs, an alert will be generated for every project currently at status red and not just projects that are set to red after the alert is created.
The alerts are generated when the scheduled job ‘Alerts’ runs.
When configuring an alert base don a register date, a new function is available – DateAdd_ASDATE. It is important to use this function and not DateAdd because DateAdd returns a string not a date so cannot be used to compare with a date value.

For example, if you want to issue an alert when a register item is nearing its target date, this formula will return true if the due date is within two days of the current date: