This section explains how to create smart notifications and how to monitor contract limits and deadlines based on them.


Purpose

Smart Notifications help users and/or customers to monitor contract limits and stay on top of their deadlines. The user defines the triggers to send the notification, when to notify and who will receive the notification. The purpose is to avoid issues such as:

  • Having executed hours exceeding the contracted ones
  • Missing contract deadlines
  • Charge the customer incorrectly
  • Losing customer's trust



How Smart Notifications Work?

The principle behind smart notifications is simple. The user creates a Notifications Rules Set containing 3 basic definitions:

  • When to send the notification (trigger);
  • The reference value for the notification (parameter);
  • Who to notify (receiver).

The next step is to associate this Notification Rules Set to an existing contract. When the contract is ACTIVE, the system will monitor the activities based on the contract progress and the worklogs the teams enter.

Whenever the activities performed to reach the specified parameters, the system will alert the related audience so they can take the necessary actions.



Creating a Notification Rules Set

To create a Notification Rules Set, go to the left menu and click on the "Contracts" option, then select the "Notifications" link. The list of existing Notification Rules Sets is displayed.



Click on thebutton to create a new Set. The following screen appears:



Fill the following fields accordingly:

  • Name: This is the Rules Set's name. Use a name that is meaningful for your current process.
  • Contract Type: For what contract type the related notification will be executed (Hours, Fixed-Price or All)
  • When to Notify: This is the rule that will trigger the notification. When you select an option from the dropdown, the system will ask for a value:



  • Value of X: The "X" represents the parameter to be used as a reference by the rule previously added (number of days, percentage, or number of hours). 


  • Who to Notify: Defines the audience for the notification. The system can notify:

    • Team: All team members that are part of the contracts where this notification set is used

    • Organization: The customers from the contracts where this notification set is used. In this case, they are notified by e-mail since they may not have access to Jira. Make sure the organization/customer has the e-mail field filled by checking this page. 
    • Contract Owner: The responsible for the contracts where this notification set is used 

    • All: Sends the notifications to all people above



After choosing the receivers, click on the  button to add the rule to the list. The screen will be cleaned so you can add another rule to the Set or save the Set by clicking on.

You can add up to 3 rules to each Notification Rules Set created



 You can repeat the same rule inside the Notification Rules Set (since they have different parameters) in case you want to be notified in different stages of the same contract. For example:

  • The user adds the "Notify X days before the contract expires" rule twice and sets "10" for the first rule and "5" for the second rule. In this way, the system will send two notifications to alert users about the contract expiration, one 10 days before the contract expires and another one 5 days before the contract expires. Each notification will be sent only once for each rule. This is also valid for notification rules that use numbers or percentages as parameters.


 The system also understands when executed activities reach the rule by exceeding the parameter and also require notification. For example:

  • The user adds the "Notify when 4 contracted hours remain" rule. Let's suppose the related contract has 10 hours remaining. Then a team member enters 8 hours in a single worklog. In this case, the system identifies that the related notification has to be sent anyway to alert the audience because that worklog event exceeded the limit in the same manner. This is also valid for notification rules that use dates as parameters.



You can only add the same rule twice in a Notification Rules Set in case they are using different parameters. Taking the previous example, you cannot add the "Notify X days before the contract expires" rule twice and informing the same "10 days" for the two rules added.




Assigning the Notification Rules Set to a Contract

There are two ways to perform this action:

  1. When you create a new Contract;
  2. When you edit an existing DRAFT Contract.

In both cases, you just need to go to the "Notifications set" dropdown (as shown below) and select the Notification Rules Set this particular contract should follow. This will tell the system what rules should be monitored in order to send the notifications to the selected audience.




 The system will only start monitoring the rules after the contract is ACTIVE. 


After the contract is ACTIVE you can always check the rules it is following by opening the contract and clicking on the  button. The following screen will be displayed (read-only):




Getting Notified

When time goes by and the team members log their work, the system will monitor the contract limits as per the Notification Rules selected. Whenever the activities reach the defined parameters, the system will send a notification to the related audience (defined on the Notification Rules Set). These users can view the notifications on the top right of the Contract Screen, where the bell icon will display the number of unread notifications:




The notifications displayed refer to all contracts the user is monitoring with the Notification Sets. The more contracts are being monitored, the bigger is the notifications amount displayed.


Notifications only work within the contract dates. If you have worklogs outside the start/end dates period, these will not be taken into consideration by the system to alert the users.


If you already received a notification that matches the defined rules, the system will not notify again in case the contract data is changed (increase hours, set new end date, etc.).



 The notification rules respect contract recurrence. It means they will work based on the defined recurrence, when available. For example:

  • A contract is created with a monthly recurrence of 40h and the Notification Rules Set associated with that contract has the "Notify when 10 contracted hours remain" rule. In this case, the system will notify the selected audience every month whenever the amount of executed hours reaches/exceeds 30h. This is also valid for notification rules that use dates as parameters.




Reading the Notifications 

When the user clicks on the Notification Icon, the list of unread notifications appears. The user has two additional icons on this screen to:

  1. Mark the notification as read
  2. Delete the notification




It is also possible to simply close the notification window by clicking again on the bell icon. This action will not change the notifications in place. 



The example above shows how ContractsPro Smart Notifications work is precise. Note that the same contract reached two different limits at the same time and the system sends the alerts properly.



Email Notifications

Organizations (customers) will receive notifications via email when contracts reached the limits defined on the Smart Notifications. In this case, the message will look like this:



It is recommended to check with your IT or infrastructure if your internal process allows sending emails from the app.


 E-mail Notifications set up in Hours are sent immediately after a worklog reaches the contract limits. When the notifications are set up. in Days, the e-mails are sent every midnight (Greenwich time).