Tag: alerts

Alerts are messages that can be sent by Cradle users (user alerts), or by parts of the Cradle system (system alerts). They have a priority (normal or urgent), a subject and a brief message, split into 4 lines.

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User Lists and Alerts

User Lists are a very useful Cradle feature. They provide the ability to specify groups of users that are involved in Configuration Management workflows.

Using User Lists for Alert Recipients

However, did you know that User Lists can also be used to specify groups of users who are to be alert recipients.

Alerts could be invaluable in keeping users automatically informed about important events occurring in the Cradle database, e.g.:

  • Items have been modified or a specific category changed
  • Project Setup has been changed
  • An item has been submitted for review
  • There has been a reply to a discussion that you are involved in
  • An item linked to an item owned by your team has changed
  • etc. etc

Setting up a User List

In Project Setup, you can setup the list of users that you wish to receive the alerts.

Setting up User Lists
Setting up user lists

Then, you can specify this User List as the recipient of the specified alerts:

Choosing user lists for alert recipients
Select User List for Alerts

You can also apply this to item-specific alerts:

Using user lists for alert recipients
Item specific alert user lists

Using this functionality, you can ensure that relevant groups of users are informed of various events without having to send to all users.

 

 

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How do I receive alerts via email?

Can I set Cradle so that I can receive alerts via email?

To be certain not to miss a modification or change to the project without even having to open Cradle to check, you can have alerts sent by email. This can be especially important when a user is ‘away from base’ or is in a role that doesn’t warrant them logging into Cradle daily.

Setting up alerts to be sent via email

When setting up alerts in project setup you have three choices on how you and users will send/receive user and system alerts:

  1. Cradle message – Alerts are dispatched as Cradle alerts and appear in users’ lists of alerts.
  2. Email or message – Alerts are dispatched as emails (if available) to users, and as Cradle alerts if not.
  3. Both – Each alert is dispatched both as a Cradle alert and an email.

Email dispatch to a user is only possible if the user has an e-mail address in their User Profile.

On Linux emails are dispatched using the contents of the E-mail command attribute that is set in User Preferences

On Windows®,  emails are despatched by calling an extended MAPI client. If an extended MAPI client doesn’t exist, e-mails will be despatched using a MAPI compliant e-mail client on the machine where the alert is being generated. If a MAPI compliant mail client doesn’t exist, or cannot be launched, then e-mail despatch will fail.

Follow these three simple steps to set this up

  1. In Project Setup set alert delivery to be either “Email or message” or “Both”

    Alert Delivery option
    Alert Delivery option on Project Setup
  2. Ensure that users in your project have email addresses set in their User Profile so that Cradle knows where to send the email

    Setting email address in user profile
    Set mail address in Users Profile
  3. Have a valid mail program and account setup on the client machine which is using Cradle.

It’s as simple as that, your users will now receive Cradle alerts via email.

Alerts being recieved via email
Alerts being received via email

To read more on alerts please refer to this previous post.

 

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Alerts in Cradle WorkBench

All Change – Tell me now!

Keep abreast of what changes are going on in a project by setting alerts. These can reflect system level changes such as a schema change, or can be set for individual items.

Recipients

You can control who gets the alert by selecting the recipient to be:

  • The default distribution
  • A particular user or
  • User list

Additionally item level alerts can be controlled by setting a category value containing the user name of the recipient, (We advise this category is set to ‘mandatory’ to ensure users fill it in, as the fallback will be to all in the project).

Direct

You can eve enter an alert directly from the using the “New…” button if you need to communicate to other users.

Setting alerts
Alerts and Settings

Priority Settings

You can choose the priority setting for alerts in the Project schema. They can be set as Urgent, High, Normal or Low

setting alert priorities and viewing the results
Alert Priorities

When the alerts are shown in the user’s Alerts dialog, they are coloured appropriately, until they have been read and then they are marked in black. An additional “Sort by”  allow the user to order by Priority, Type, Date or Status making it easier to keep up to date with what’ and when things are changing in a project.

Article Updated 13/07/2018 – Cradle 7.4 Priority settings for Alerts