Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notifications

You can set up Custom Processes that use a Documents, Jobs or Client view in FYI to trigger the process. This can be a system view or you can set up your own views to use (refer to Saving Changes to the View Layout, Modifying and Deleting Views).

When using an FYI Document view to trigger a Custom Process, you can set up a Summary Notification step so that the notifications are sent out automatically as a summary.

• An example of using Document - View Filters is when there are documents "Pending Approval". You set up the Custom Process to send out a notification to each of the relevant approvers, for example every 12 hours. Depending on the users settings, this will get sent as an email with a link that the Approver can click to go directly to the Documents list automatically filtered to show only the emails/documents that are "Pending Approval" and where that user is selected as the Approver. A notification is also sent as a reminder. This can be sent out as a Summary Notification. For details of this, refer to Pending Approval Notification (Custom Process using a View and Summary Notification) and Client Upload Notification (Custom Process using a View and Summary Notification).
  
  
• Another example of using a Document - View Filters and a Summary Notification is for the Tax Assessment process where you want to customise who gets notified. For example, if you have two offices with the different administration teams and would like the admin officer of the respective office to be notified of the Tax Assessments rather than the Manager or Partner. See below Sending Notification to other than Manager or Partner.
  
  
• An example of using the Client - View Filters is when sending out newsletters. For example, if you had Client Custom Fields of "Opt in" and "Newsletters", you can set up a Client view with the clients that have these selected. You can then select this view as the Custom Automation Client - View Filters so only those clients receive the newsletter created by the Custom Process. The Client view gives you an easy way to check the clients who will receive the newsletter before sending it.
  
  
• If you want to make the process available for all Clients (or Documents or Jobs) you would select a view that shows "All".

Video Walkthrough
For a video walkthrough on this feature, refer to Creating a Document-driven Custom Process (4 min) and Creating a Job-driven Custom Process (8 min).

The following explains in general how to set up a Custom Process using a view and a Summary Notification. Refer also to the examples in Examples of Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notification.

Determine the View to Use as the Filter or Set up the View

Make sure you have the view in place to do the filter. This needs to be a view in the Documents, Clients or Jobs list.

An FYI administrator, or a user in a User Group that has Permissions enabled for Views (refer to Managing User Groups) can set up a view that isolates the scenario you are looking to monitor or to send reminder notifications on. Depending on what you want the view to trigger in the process, the view can also include filters and search criteria. Refer to Saving Changes to the View Layout, Modifying and Deleting Views.

Note: When saving a new view, you can specify Automations only so it only appears in Custom Processes and is not included as a view in the Documents, Clients or Jobs lists.

Set up the Custom Process

The following is the Custom Process set up to show the example of sending a Summary Notification for documents Pending Approval.

Name
Ensure the name describes the process. The Name is included in the Notification in FYI and, depending on the users settings, in the email notification that is sent.

Trigger
Select the Trigger in the Process as "Schedule".

Then click the icon next to Click to define a schedule to set up the schedule.

Start and End. Set the Start date and optionally the End date. These dates determine when then process is going to start and end running.

Select the interval at which you want to schedule the process to run, for example "Every 12 Hours".

Note: When setting Hours, this is within 24 hours so be mindful of how many notifications you will be sending in a day,

Filter
A filter determines what information is monitored or included in the process.
Click the edit icon to display the Filter Items.

The Filter Items displays. The Filter Type of "Client - Select Filters" does not use a view. For details of the Client filter refer to Setting up Custom Processes.

The other options are to filter using a view.

To filter using one of the Views for a Documents, Clients or Jobs list, set the Filter Type as "Document - View Filters", "Client - View Flters" or "Job - View Filters". When setting up a Custom Process using a "Jobs - View Filters" or "Client - View Filters" this is set up in the same way as a "Document - View Filters" as shown in this example.

View - Select the View you want the process to monitor or to send reminder notifications on. A View must be selected.

Run Only Once Per Document/Run Only Once Per Client - This option determines whether or not the automation sends the notification about a document, client or job only once.

There is a limit of 5000 set on the number of documents or clients that a process will run for. If there are more than this limit of 5000 that you need to run the process on (for example more than 5000 clients) you need to run the process again to run it for the documents or clients that were not included in the initial run. Setting Run Only Once Per Document or Run Only Once Per Client runs the process but excludes the documents/clients it has already run for.

The Run Only Once Per Document is also set in the example of sending notifications of what needs to be approved, you would usually set this so Approvers are sent further emails or notifications if the document is still pending approval. This means the Approvers only have to refer to the last notification to see what they currently need to approve. So for this example, you would remove the checkmark for Run Only Once Per Document.

If you want to send a notification to approvers only once that a document needs approval (that is, when it is initially set to "Pending Approval") you would checkmark Run Only Once Per Document.

In an example of send notifications when a document has come back from digital signing, or if a Job has the Job State set to a specific value, you would usually only want to send the notification once.

When the Filter Type is set as Client View, this is shows as Run Only One Per Client.

Inherit Job
When the Filter Type is set as Document View, the Inherit Job option is included in the process. When this is checkmarked to enable it, and a process step is set up to use the relative Partner or Manager for the Sender of an email, for the workflow Owner or Approver or for a Task Assignee, the Partner or Manager is taken from the Job selected for the document. If the Job does not have a Partner/Manager then this is picked up from the Client settings.

When Inherit Job is disabled, this picks up the client’s Partner/Manager’s value in the “Sender” field.

In this example, no documents are created for this process so Inherit Job is uncheckmarked.

Add the Step for a Summary Notification

Summary Notification when an FYI view is used to trigger the process. The Summary Notification Action in a Step is only available when "Document - View Filters" has been selected as the Filter. When setting up a Custom Process triggered by a Job or Client view, this would trigger individual notifications.

To set up the step for the Summary Notification:

1. Click Add Step.
2. Select FYI.
3. Select Summary Notification.
4. For Notify User, select who you want to send the Summary Notification to. This can be set to a specific person in your user list. Or it can be set as "Manager" to set the owner as the relative client or job's manager, or as "Partner" to set the owner as the relative client or job's partner (as held in Xero Practice Manager).
   
   
   • For a process that is run for a Client, the Manager or Partner is taken from the Client Details.
   • For a process that is run in the context of a Job, the Manager or Partner is taken from the Job Details.
   
   Where, for example, the Document Owner or Document Approver column has been included in the selected view, you will see these as selection for the Notify User to send the notification to the relative "Document Owner" or the person set as the "Document Approver.
   
   
   The following is an example of a step added to sent the Summary Notification to the "Document Approver".
   
   

Test is not relevant for a Summary Notification. 

When the Summary Notification is triggered, the relevant users as specificied as the Notify User receive a notification.  Depending on the users settings, this will also get sent as an email. The notification and the email show the relevant number of emails and documents that triggered the process.

For examples of the notification and the email for a notification of documents that are pending approval, , and how the link is used, refer to Summary Notification in Reviewing and Approving Emails and Documents.

Alter Document Step

The Alter Document step is useful for Custom Processes that use a view. When using a view to retrieve a collection of documents you can then use Alter Document to update any key fields. In the Alter Document step, the Name of the document is set as a default as the Original Filename. For example, with Client Uploads, when the documents are imported, the Alter Document can be used to file the documents as Workpapers.  Refer also to Sharing the Uploads Folder with the Client.

Sending Process Notification to other than Manager or Partner

The following explains how to set up a Custom Process for sending out a notification of a Tax Assessment automation to users other than a Manager or Partner, for example, to the administrator of one of two different offices.

1. Save two document views with the filters set as a combination of:
   The respective partners of each of the two offices
      and
   The Name search containing the relevant words such as "Tax Assessment"
   
   
2. Within each of the Tax Assessment automations, in the create step for the Word or the Email, set the Approver to be the "Partner".
   
   
3. Configure scheduled Custom Process automations with the filter based on each of the document views.
   
   
4. Within each of these Custom Process automations enable a step "Summary Notification" which is directed to the appropriate administrator for each office.