APM Notification Service


Adonis Notification Service is a utility that enables you to set up periodical auto-generated emails or reports and send them to applicable crew members or to fixed email addresses.

Visit the Adonis Reports, Views and Similar space to find pre-defined Notification tasks and reports.


Functionality

In this section, we will walk you through the main principles under which Notification Service works.
By following the guidelines, you will get to know how to configure, create, edit and schedule tasks for sending notifications.

Getting Started

Before starting to work with the Service, make sure the access right for the 824 Notification Service routine is granted to you in Adonis Control Centre.

To access the Notification Service features:

  1. Run Adonis Personnel Manager.

  2. Within the application, switch to the Setup ribbon tab and click Notification service.

As a result, Notification Service becomes active from the Manage tab. Here you can see a set of scheduled notification tasks:

The Notification Service grid includes the most common information about a notification task, such as its name, status, scheduled time, and interval.

The commands that allow managing notification emails are available:

on the Manage ribbon bar

from the context menu when right-clicking anywhere in the grid

 

Сlick New to create a notification task.
Click Open to edit an existing notification task.
Click Delete to remove a selected notification task.

Scheduled Task

The delivery of notifications is handled by the system based on the time and date values that you define.

To schedule a task, click the New button on the ribbon bar. On clicking, the following dialog appears:

In the Task Properties dialog, make the following initial setups:

  • In the Task name field, specify the notification task name.

  • The Task enabled checkbox is selected by default which means that the task is active. If the checkbox is deselected, the task will be added to the list of scheduled tasks, however, it will not be executed.

 

Now, switch to the Task schedule tab to set date and time settings.

Under Time settings, proceed as below:

  • In the Run at the box, you can define the time component for sending a notification. Type or select the part of the timestamp you want to change. By default, the time is set to 00:00.

  • Select the Repeat during the day checkbox if you want to send a notification email more than once a day. On selecting, the feature-specific fields become active. Type or select the interval in minutes and limit the time for sending.

  • In the Last Execution UTC drop-down menu, indicate the date and time when you want to stop sending notification emails.

  • Enter or select Local Time in the drop-down menu.

 

Under Date settings, proceed as detailed below:

  • In the First run on the field, enter or select the date for sending a notification for the first time.

  • In the Repeat on dates drop-down list, set a recurring due date on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly basis as well as a completion date. To avoid sending a notification periodically, select the Do not repeat on other dates option.

 

Select the When finished send the log file to checkbox to enable the possibility to receive a log file after sending a notification. Once enabled, enter the email address.
Besides, you can reschedule the existing task. To do this, simply double-click the task you want to reschedule and define the time and date settings as mentioned above.

Set Email Address

In the Notification E-mail tab, you can define one or more email addresses to which a notification is to be sent.

There are two methods in APM:

  • Create a list of email addresses manually.

  • Use a SQL statement to fetch the required email addresses from the database.

In this section, we will show you how to proceed with the selected method.

Add Emails Manually

To manually enter one or more email addresses, navigate to the Notification E-mails tab in the Task Properties dialog and select the Fixed E-mail list option:

Now, fill in the fields as described below:

  1. Recipients. Enter one or more email addresses of the recipients.

     

  2. E-mail subject. Specify the main idea of the notification.

  3. E-mail body. Type the essence of the message you want to convey.

Retrieve Emails From Database

To enable the possibility to create a SQL statement for fetching email addresses from the database based on a preset condition, switch to the Notification E-mails tab in the Task Properties dialog and select the Dynamic from database option:

Now, fill in the fields as described below:

  1. In the Recipients box, write a SQL statement to fetch the required email addresses from the database. The statement will filter the crew members' emails that fit one or more conditions.

     

  2. In the Field identifying email address field, define one of the aliases that exist in the selection (e.g. #Email).

  3. Specify the main idea of the notification in the E-mail subject field.

  4. In the E-mail body field, type the text of the message to be sent. When entering field alias, wrap them in brackets, e.g. [#Pin]. This will reveal data as real database values corresponding to each selected person.

  5. Select the Distribute checkbox in case you want to send a personal notification (e.g. birthday card). As a result, the notification will be sent as an attachment as well as added to the Enclosed Documents related to a person.

  6. In the Document Type field, click the down caret to make the list of options appear. In the drop-down list, select a document type previously defined in General Codes (Setup > General Codes > Enclosed Documents).

Attach Report

When setting a notification task, you can add a report to be sent as an attachment in the notification email.

Switch to the Report and SQL tab in the Task Properties dialog:

Select the Attach report checkbox to enable the sources for loading a report from:

Existing report. From the drop-down list select a report that has previously been loaded (.frx and .fr3 file extensions).

Import from file. Click the Browse button to choose a file.

You can set a single report file to be added to the notification task.

In the Report parameters field, define the way to execute a selected report by specifying the parameters in the following form:

Parameter1Name = <parameter1 value>

ParameterName2 = <parameter2 value>

Besides, you can define parameters by a list of fields returned by the SQL statement. For more information, refer to Retrieve Emails From Database.

For example, you can define a certain position for the report to be generated. This is set using the following syntax:

Numeric = [#Position]

where Numogrid is a parameter name and [#Position] is a name of the field used in the SQL statement. The field name is required to be wrapped in brackets.

A date must be specified in the yyyy-mm-dd format. In case a date value is passed from the dynamic query, it should be converted to this format in the SELECT statement (e.g. convert (varchar(10), Passport. Expiry,126) as the expiry date).

Select the Run SQL script to check additional criteria before the task execution checkbox to enable the field where you can define additional criteria before the report is run and attached to the notification email.

When creating a query, you can use any tables related to your database both Crew Portal and APM.

Creating such a query affects the notification task execution:

If the script returns a result, the task will not be executed. The result of the script will be displayed in the Last run Status field associated with the task.

If the script doesn't return any result, the notification task will be run as scheduled.

To prevent unauthorized users from accessing the data in the document, select the Protect PDF file with a password checkbox. This enables the options to be used for setting a password that corresponds to:

  • Personal ID

  • Birthdate

  • Personal ID (birthdate if empty)

Housekeeping

Before getting started with the installation of the Adonis Notification Service, make sure .NET Framework 4.7 or higher is installed on your PC. Otherwise, follow the link below to access the installation package:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=42642

Besides, to install the application, you are required to have administrator rights on your computer. To check whether you are an Administrator, go to Settings > Accounts > Your info.

You can install the utility in less than ten steps. Let us start!

Step 1

To start the installation, locate and double-click the installation file provided by our support team.

Step 2

When the File Download dialog appears, click the Save button.

Step 3

Once the download is complete, go to the downloaded path and double-click the installation file to launch the setup wizard. Click Next to proceed.

Step 4

Specify the database settings:



To access the database settings, first, you need to run Adonis Personnel Manager and follow the prompts below:

  1. Go to the Service Desk ribbon tab and click the About button. In the dialog box that appears, click the System button to get access to the system information:

     

  2. In the System Information dialog, go to Adonis Personnel Manager > Database > Connection to locate the database and server names. Now, copy and paste the data to the correspondent fields in the setup wizard: Database name and Database server name.

     

  3. In the System Information dialog, switch to Environment where you can find Site Number. Now, copy and paste the value to the correspondent Site ID field in the setup wizard.

     

  4. In the Task table AutoRefresh Time (seconds) dialog, enter the number standing for the time interval in seconds based on which the Tasks table will be automatically refreshed.

  5. The Service instance name field allows you to define different Service names for several instances of Adonis Notification Service that you may want to install. The field is required if you have several databases on a single site.


    Once you have finished configuring the database settings, click Next in the setup wizard.

Step 5

Define the e-mail settings that will ensure a proper connection with your SMTP server:



Select the Use SMTP settings from the APM option to allow Adonis Notification Service to use the SMTP settings configured in Adonis Personnel Manager.

Select the Use SMTP settings from the APP option to enable the fields for configuring SMTP server settings in Adonis Personnel Portal:

  • SMPT server. Enter a server name to which you want to get connected.

  • Port. Enter 25 as it is a default port number of an outgoing SMTP server.

  • Sender e-mail. Define the email address that will be used for sending notifications.

  • SMTP requires authentication. Select the checkbox to enable SMTP authentication Enter your credentials to log into the server.

Click Next to continue.

Step 6

When the Choose Install Location dialog appears, click Browse… and choose the folder to install Adonis Notification Service. The default destination folder is C:\Program Files\Adonis\NotificationService.



To proceed, click Install.

Step 7

You can see the Adonis Notification Service installation process in progress.



Click Next to finish the installation process.

Step 8

Once completed, Adonis Notification Service is successfully installed on your PC:



Click Finish to close the Adonis Notification Service setup wizard.