Introduction 

Email notifications are sent to Approval Manager users when an account in the system has been created for them and when a notification has been generated for them. When configuring email notifications, you will want to consider the following:

• Email notifications can only be sent if you have enabled the MetaSQLMail SQL job and provided the address of your SMTP server.
• The MetaSQLMail job is a SQL Server job that can be enabled and disabled from the Email Notifications Configuration page.
• The MetaSQLMail job can be used by other MetaCommunications applications to send email.

Content

• Sender Information and Types of Email Notifications
• Defining Sender Information for Email Notifications
• Setting Autologin options for Email Notifications
• Specifying the SMTP Server Address
• Sending Test Emails
• Starting and Stopping Email Notifications

Email Notifications#Defining Sender Information for Email Notifications

Sender Information and Types of Email Notifications

As part of your configuration of email notifications, you will need to define the sender information for your emails. This information will appear to recipients of email notifications as the sender's name and email address. There are two types of email notifications for which you can define sender information:

• Account Creation email notifications
• Proofing email notifications

Account creation email notifications are sent to new users when an account has been created for them. Since new users may have some initial questions, and their natural inclination will be to respond to the sender of the account creation notification, you may want to define the sender information for account creation notifications for an email account that is actively monitored at your organization. This will give you an opportunity to respond to questions arising from new users.

For proofing email notifications, you may want to employ a different strategy. These notifications are sent to users assigned to approval processes in Approval Manager. Because of the high volume of notifications that are sent, the fact that you want to use Approval Manager and not email to capture communication about proofs to be reviewed, and the fact that the Approval Manager system is unable to receive emails, you should indicate both the company name and "DO NOT REPLY" in the sender information for outgoing proofing email notifications.

Defining Sender Information for Email Notifications

If email notifications are used, Approval Manager will send emails to new users that contain information related to approval processes they are stakeholders in. Any user participating in an approval process as a reviewer, producer, or manager will receive proofing notifications.

1. Click the Email Notifications link on the Administration page to open the Email Notifications page, if it is not already open.

2. Scroll down to the Proofing Notifications section of the Email Notifications page.

3. Type the name you would like to appear in the Name field.

4. Type the email address you would like notifications to be from in the Address field.

Because of the large volume of email notifications generated by the system, you may want to include text indicating that the account is not monitored, recipients should not reply to the email, or other informative text to intended to dissuade recipients from responding to the email notifications with reply emails.

5. Continue with the other procedures described on this page or click Save to save the change to the MetaSQLMail SQL Server Job checkbox.

Setting Autologin options for Email Notifications

The autologin from email notifications feature allows recipients of email notifications to automatically log in to Approval Manager without entering their user name or password by following hyperlinks or hyperlinked buttons contained in the notification. This feature can be turned on and off at will without affecting the sending of email notifications.

1. Click the Email Notifications link in the Administration tab to open the Email Notifications page, if it is not already open.

2. Scroll down to the Autologin from Notifications section of the Email Notifications page.

3. Check the Enable Autologin checkbox to allow recipients of email notifications to automatically log in without entering their user account credentials when following hyperlinks contained in email notifications.

4. Type the number of days after sending an email notification that autologin functionality will stop working.

To include an expiration note within email notifications containing information on autologin functionality, enable the Include Expiration Note in Emails checkbox.

5. Continue with the other procedures described on this page or click Save to save the autologin settings for email notifications.

Specifying the SMTP Server Address

Approval Manager can send email notifications itself or using an SMTP Server that will accept email messages generated by Approval Manager for delivery to recipient addresses.

To specify how Approval Manager handles email notifications:

1. Click the Email Notifications link in the Administration tab to open the Email Notifications page, if it is not already open.

2. Scroll down to the Outgoing Email Setup section of the Email Notifications page.

3. Select either the Approval Manager 2012 will send email itself or Approval Manager 2012 will send email using SMTP server options.

• If you choose to the SMTP option, a form will appear. Type the address of the SMTP Server in the SMTP Server Address field of the form.

4. Send a test email to verify that the selected SMTP server will send email from Approval Manager. See Sending Test Emails for additional information.

5. Continue with the other procedures described on this page or click Save to save the changes.

Note: Email notifications will not begin to be sent until the MetaSQLMail SQL Server job is started.

Sending Test Emails

Approval Manager allows you to send test emails on-demand to an email address of your choice. This can be helpful for validating the entered SMTP server, tracking down email delivery problems.

1. Click the Email Notifications link on the Administration tab to open the Email Notifications page, if it is not already open.

2. Scroll down to the Outgoing Email Setup section of the Email Notifications page.

3. Type the email address to which you would like to send a test email in the To: field.

4. Click Send. Approval Manager will attempt to immediately send the email using the SMTP server address defined above.

Starting and Stopping Email Notifications

Email Notifications can be started or stopped as needed by using the Start and Stop buttons in the Outgoing Email Setup section of the Email Notifications page.

Starting and stopping email notifications will start and stop the MetaSQLMail SQL Server Job used to send email notifications from Approval Manager. 
By default, email notifications are stopped and should not be started until the SMTP Server address is defined (see Specifying the SMTP Server Address), a test email has been successfully sent (and received), and the email notification information has been provided.

Note: When the MetaSQLMail SQL Server job is disabled, email notifications will continue to be generated and queued in the database until the MetaSQLMail SQL Server Job is enabled again. At this point, the MetaSQLMail SQL Server job will attempt to send all queued email notifications.

Note: Disabling the MetaSQLMail SQL Server job will prevent any MetaCommunications products in use in your environment from sending emails.

1. Click the Email Notifications link on the Administration tab to open the Email Notifications page, if it is not already open.

2. Scroll down to the Outgoing Email Setup section of the Email Notifications page.

3. Click the Start or Stop button to start or stop email notifications.