Using Status Based E-mail Templates

The recently released Visual Intercept 3.5.2 includes support for different e-mail notification content based on status. There are a number of ways you can use this feature to improve your user’s experience and your workflow.

Let’s say you are using Visual Intercept Web and Visual Intercept Web Relay to manage incidents detected internally as well as other incidents reported by beta testers and others out in the field. When the incidents are reported you would probably want to have your internal users notified with notifications containing detailed information about the incident along with a hyperlink to the incident in Visual Intercept Web Enterprise. However, in the case of your Web Relay users you would probably want them to be notified only when the incidents are closed. Although these notifications for Web Relay users would contain less detailed information about the incident, they would contain additional information on how Web Relay users could follow up if they believe the incident had not been resolved properly, as well as a hyperlink to the incident in Web Relay – not Web Enterprise. In other words, based on the state of the issue, there are different kinds of information and resources you would want to make available through your e-mail notifications.

Visual Intercept 3.5.2 allows you to do this by relating particular e-mail notification templates to particular status values. To do this you will need to edit your e-mail notification template. To locate the template you are currently using, go to the computer which runs your notification service, launch the Visual Intercept Services Manager, select the notification service, click properties, and look at the template location in the Notification Options tab.

Once you have located the template you can edit it in Notepad. Open the template and look for the section labeled:

; =============================
; INCIDENT TEMPLATE
; =============================

This is where the incident section of the template file begins. Immediately after that you will see the following tag: [INCIDENT BEGIN]. This marks the beginning of the default template. The default template is the template the notification service will use if the status of an incident which generates a notification is not tagged to a particular template. You will want to leave this template in place. Scroll down to find the end tag for that template: [INCIDENT END]. After the [INCIDENT END] tag add you own tag to begin a new template section except after the word “INCIDENT” place a period followed by the status you want the new template to be activated by, e.g., [INCIDENT.closed BEGIN]. Add the corresponding end tag, e.g., [INCIDENT.closed END] to complete the section for the new template. You can add as many of these sections for as many status values as you like.

Now you are ready to insert content for the new template. The contents of the template can be customized like any other notification template. For more information on customizing the template, including formatting the template in HTML and adding an incident hyperlink see the following two Tech Tips:

http://elsitech.com/support/support_techtips02.html
http://elsitech.com/support/support_techtips01.html