Communication templates and notifications

An escalation can initiate notifications when records are not acted upon in a timely manner. You can ensure that notifications are uniform in structure by basing them on communication templates. Notifications are sent out in the form of emails through your email service.

A notification includes a template ID, the role or recipient name, the subject of the notification, and the message. If you have information that is sent out repeatedly, you can create a communication template for it and attach it as a notification on an escalation.

You can create two types of notifications in the Escalations application:

• A free-form notification that uses only a few features of a communication template
• A template-based notification that can use all the features of a communication template, including attached documents

If you create a free-form notification the system generates a template ID for it. However, the system does not save the notification for reuse in the Communication Templates application. If you select an existing communication template, the system defaults the values in the Role/Recipient, Subject, and Message fields from the communication template you chose. You cannot change these read-only values from within the Escalations application.