Notifications

The Notifications functionality enables portal members to have their finger on the pulse of changes on the portal. Portal member can subscribe to changes on specific portal records or even portal entities. Then, when any other portal members make changes in tracked fields on subscribed records, they will be notified about those changes, directly on the portal and/or by email. Portal members can choose the type of changes (a new record is inserted, an existing record is changed, a record is deleted) they want to be notified about.

Xpand Portal features the following types of notification subscriptions:

• Direct Notifications subscription – The portal member can manually subscribe to changes on a record on a page where the notifications functionality is enabled.
• Template-based subscriptions – These types of subscription are based on a subscription template, which defines which fields will be tracked for changes, what are the conditions for triggering a notification, what the notification title and body will be, and whether it will be shown only on the portal, sent by email, or both. Subscriptions based on a template are created and configured in CMS (back end) with the possibility for portal member to create a subscription and edit its settings. Template-based subscriptions include the following subtypes:
  • All Records Notifications subscription – Portal members subscribe to changes on all records on a specific page (in any or certain selected fields). This type of subscription is enabled after the portal member creates, configures the corresponding settings, and saves the subscription settings from the Manage Notifications window.
  • Date Condition Notifications subscription - Portal members subscribe to changes on a page with the following condition that triggers a notification: the field value in a specified date field(s) must be equal to a specific date. This type of subscription is enabled after the portal member creates, configures the corresponding settings, and saves the subscription settings from the Manage Notifications window.
  • Condition Notifications subscription - Portal members subscribe to changes on a page with the following condition that triggers a notification: the field value in a specified field(s) meet the specified criteria in the condition. This type of subscription is enabled after the portal member creates, configures the corresponding settings, and saves the subscription settings from the Manage Notifications window.

By default, notifications are sent to a specific member who subscribed to changes. However, notifications of any type can be configured to be sent to all members of a specific member group(s). In this case, such notifications are referred to as Group Notifications. 

To use notifications, this functionality must be enabled and configured in CMS.

This chapter describes how to use the Notifications functionality:

• Subscribing to changes on a record
• Unsubscribing to changes on a record
• Viewing notifications
• Managing notifications