Objective

The objective of the LYNX notification system is to provide an additional possibility to keep users more involved with their projects and keep them posted about crucial events related to their projects in the most efficient way.

By providing selective scheduled or direct E-mail notifications, users can be alerted to take action. 

The LYNX Notification system allows a more effective use of LYNX.  By sending relevant notifications at the right time, the responsible user knows when it’s time to take decisions, actions or to update their tasks.     

Overview

The LYNX Notification systems provides two types of notifications:

1. Direct notifications;
   • Will be sent directly after a change or update, for example in a project or on a task.
2. Scheduled notifications.
   • Will be sent according to a defined schedule, set by the space owner.
   • Example: Project Managers will receive an e-mail every Friday, containing an overview of (task) changes, updates, progress and buffers status.
   • The scheduled notifications system sends e-mails based on templates, which can be configured and changed by the space owner. 

The Notifications can be set by “role” (see the LYNX Space Properties-sections).  The identified roles include:

• The project manager (PM);
• The task manager (TM);
• The resource manager (RM);
• The resources (RS), if they are linked to an user;
• The card owner (CO).

 The LYNX Notification System allows you to implement also specific events and alerts, to optimize the workflow and notification system for your situation.

Direct notifications

The following direct notifications are available:

Project related:

• Send a notification when an active (= released) project:
  • Has an “expected due date” change
  • Advanced / Rule-based (contact A-dato for more information):
    • Has a milestone buffer that became red for the first time in 10 days
    • Has a project buffer that became red for the first time in 10 days
  • Send a notification when a project:
    • Was released, to notify that associated task are now also active and can be started
    • Was set from released to not started

Task Related:

• Send a notification when a task in an active (released) project:
  • Is created
  • Is deleted
  • Has a status change
  • If a task manager is added to a task in an active project, he / she will receive a notification
  • Advanced / Rule-based (Contact A-dato for more information):
    • Is expected to start within 3 days, so preparations can be made
    • Send a notification when skill / resources are changed

Notes Related:

• Send a notification when a note in an active project:
  • Is created
  • Is modified

-- Activating the Notes notification enables quick communication of for example issues or buffer recovery actions -- 

Scheduled notifications

Scheduled notifications are defined in the form of a standard template and report, which summarizes all the events and changes that took place during the last week, for example.

The following notification overview reports are available:

• Send a weekly project update summarizing:
  • Buffer progress and due date
  • Changed tasks in the specific week
  • Not updated tasks in the specific week
• Send a weekly update summarizing task updates within a project:
  • Changed tasks in the specific week
  • Not updated tasks in the specific week.

Set-up and configuration of the Notification System

Space Properties – Activate LYNX Notification System

Select the Configure Tab in the main Desktop window and next the “Space properties” button.  Choose “Allow LYNX to send notifications”.

 

Set-up of Direct Notifications

Match the Notifications Level (Project, Task, Note) and the roles you would like to receive the notifications, by changing the value from False to True or the other way around.

In example above, Direct Notifications for Projects and Tasks will be sent to the Project Managers.

 

Direct Notification Examples

Example 1: Project Manager receives a message that is project has been Released.

 

Example 2: Both the project manager and the task manager get a confirmation that the status of a task has been changed to Started.

 

Example 3: The Task manager receives a notification that a note has been created.

 

Example 4: If a user makes multiple changes within a project or multiple projects, the notification will first show the name of the project and then the list of changes/ updates.

 

Scheduled Notifications

Scheduled Notification Templates

Currently the following two Notification Templates are available and pre-defined by A-dato:

• Project: Weekly update
• Task: Weekly update

The templates can be found under Reporting and within the Lynx -> Notifications reports folder. To create a notification template, open one of the two reports, press: Report Dialog, create a Copy and give the copy a name.

As you can see, the Folder name is automatically chosen: Notifications. In this way, Lynx recognizes that you have created a new template for your notifications.

After you have pressed Save, a new folder is created within the Reporting module:

 

Set-up of Scheduled Notifications

Select Add new from the Notifications screen within Space Properties. The first time you open this set-up, a pop-up box will appear: Schedule needed. Press OK and create your schedule via the Template Schedule Editor, see figure: 

In which you can determine the following configurations:

Basics

• Description: Name of the schedule;
• Template: Select the template, which you have configured within the reporting module;
• Login: Select the admin account, which is responsible for sending these notifications;
• Email rule: Select the roles that you would like to exclude from the list.
  • Example: If you have a user that is both Task Manager and Project Manager and you have created two templates to send different notifications to Project Managers and Task Managers. You can choose to exclude Project Managers from the email list of Task Managers. Because they will already receive another report that is created for Project Managers. Otherwise, they will get both notifications.

Scheduling

• Recurrence pattern
  • Select the day(s) and time you would like to receive the report.
• Range of recurrence
  • Configure the recurrence of the report, standard is no start and end date. 

You can define a schedule pattern for each individual Scheduled Notification you would like to implement.  In this example we defined a schedule that triggers a notification report every Monday at 7.00 AM.  The name of the schedule can be any, also just “Weekly Monday”.

Format 

This is not often used within notifications, because it's text that is send via email. But if you have created a notification that sends a file, you can select the following configurations:

• Format: Select the type of file you would like to receive: PDF, HTML or CSV.
• Seperator: Helps to define the structure of the provided data
• Encoding: Select the preferred encoding method.

 

After you have pressed OK, the Scheduled notification becomes visible within the Notification tab. In which you can change who will receive the notification, in this example the Project Manager. And you have the possibility to edit the schedule, by pressing Edit, see figure: 

 

In the example above the “Project Weekly (Monday)” schedule is linked to the Project weekly notification report, which will be received by each Project manager, containing his projects only.

In the example above also the Task Weekly report has been added to be received by the PM and the TM.

Examples of scheduled notifications

Project weekly update for the PM

 

Task weekly update for the PM and the TM

 

Other possible configurations:

By configuring reports yourself, there are many more options to make your own notifications, for instance:

• Send daily card(s) update to the Card Owner
  • About the cards that are changed that specific day, for example every day at 5 pm.\
• Send the completed tasks from Resources to the Resource manager on a weekly basis.
• Send Resources their Ready to Start- tasks at the beginning of the day.
• Etc.