Alerts

[Luca Garotta]

Hi,
I configured the alerts server and the account alerts settings for receiving alerts (popups) when tasks are assigned or calendar is updated but nothing happens on client machines.
What could be my mistake?

Thanks in advance and regards.

Luca Garotta

[Support Team]

Re: Alerts

Hi Luca,

Thank you for the question. I believe you are referring to two different notification methods:

1. Alerts Server - The Alerts Server allows employees to receive email alerts for any changes performed in the database, such as new tickets assigned to them, new appointments, updates on existing ones, etc. Each user can set up the alerts settings in Tools > Options > Alerts, and this will determine the email alerts level they wish to receive (e.g. all new tickets, all appointments updates, etc.).

You can read more about setting up and using the Alerts Server in the Alerts Server Setup Guide.

2. Tasks and Appointments Reminders - regardless of the Alerts Server, you can also set up tasks and appointments reminders, which will pop up a reminder window. The reminders are personal (the task/appointment owner will receive the pop up window), and do not require any special setup besides setting the reminder in the task or appointment itself.

I hope this clarifies the difference between email alerts and pop up reminders, and that this helps you resolve your current settings. Please let us know if you require further clarification on this.

Ethan

[Luca Garotta]

Re: Alerts

Hi Ethan and thank you for the clarification about the alert service.
My question was not so clear, sorry. I'm speaking about the Alerts Server.
When I set an appointment on my colleague calendar, no mail is received in his mailbox.
The mail address is correctly configured in my colleague account, the smtp settings are correct (the test report no problems) and the CommitCRM user alert options have been set.
What could I check? Any idea?

Thank you.

Luca

[Luca Garotta]

Re: Alerts

Sorry Ethan another information. I checked the queue Commit\Server\QSysEDOutbox and I can see all the messages. It seems it can't send mails to the mail server. I deleted the queue and restarted the service but nothing changes. The Outgoing mail server settings are correct (the test reports no failure).
Thank you, regards

Luca

[Support Team]

Re: Alerts

Hi Luca,

It sounds like you have checked almost everything, and usually once the tests work ok, and you clear any old emails from the outgoing queue (which may have had wrong settings), this should work.

I suspect that there may be a problem with the "from" email address defined for alerts (in the ServerConfig > Alerts tab), which prevents from it to work properly.

Please check the "from" email and make sure it is a valid email address. If you change anything, make sure to delete the outgoing queue and restart the services.

If this does not help, in order to proceed, please send us your RangerMSP log files from the Help > Technical Support menu, and we will look into it and try to find more accurate information there.

Ethan

[AN-Tech]

Re: Alerts

What do you have listed in the port section of the Outgoing Mail Server tab?

[Luca Garotta]

Re: Alerts

Hi everyone and sorry for the late reply.
I finally succeeded in sending mails. Even if I didn't change anything from my last attempt suddenly CommitCRM started sending mails.
Now I have a new problem in converting incoming emails to new tickets. I mean ticket is opened but no reply is sent neither to sender nore to the backup address. Under "Email to ticket" I checked "Send response email" and specified the backup address into the bcc field. Under "backup settings" I inserted the same address into the "backup email address" field.

Thank you again for your help.

Luca

P.S. Port seems to be ok as the "Test SMTP connection" succeeds.

[AN-Tech]

Re: Alerts

When I set this up recently the outgoing port had the word "smtp" in it instead of it's port number "25". When I did the test emails they worked fine. I replaced smtp with 25 and then after removing the emails that were stuck in the queue everything worked fine. See if your outgoing port has a name in it instead of the port number.

[Luca Garotta]

Re: Alerts

I checked the port and is 25. Anyway thanks for the advice!
Bye

[Support Team]

Re: Alerts

Hi Luca,

thanks for the update, glad to hear the alerts are working now. Actually, if the Alerts Server outgoing emails are working for you, this should work also for the Email Connector. Just make sure to restart the RangerMSPServer service after you change any settings via the ServerConfig program.

HTH

Ethan

[FunctionOne]

Re: Alerts

Hey Guys-

Wanted to revisit this item. Looking for feedback on how to do the following:

Would like CommitCRM to ping technicians if more than a day has gone by since a ticket deadline, task or appointment has passed without them adding charges. Hoping to create a process that will prod technicians to get their time logged ASAP. We definitely remind them verbally and via email - but it would be nice if I could get CommitCRM to do my nagging for me.

Any ideas?

[AN-Tech]

Re: Alerts

That sounds great, time to pass the nagging on to someone else :-)

[Support Team]

Re: Alerts

Hi,

I've heard this request (and similar ones) a few times and I've added your comments to the feature request in our system. We'll have to look into how we might be able to do it, without creating too many annoying alerts, as these have a tendency of being ignored at the end of the day... Thanks for your feedback!

Sherry

[FunctionOne]

Re: Alerts

I've got a suggestion that could help with this problem and wouldn't require any emails.

Right now, when you're working in the full client - and you complete a task or appt - you have the option to click 'DONE'. When you click 'done' it immediately opens a History Note. Perhaps at some point in this process - maybe when saving the history note - a pop-up could offer the user the option to enter a charge for the note. The user can then choose 'yes' and a charge form can open or 'no' at which point the history note saves with CommitCRM adding some text similar to *no charge as per technician*

This may be one simple way to use some gentle prodding to remind technicians to enter charges when completing tasks or appts.

We could even go a step further and offer to enter a charge anytime a history note is closed? Not sure if this would become too unwieldy but...

The only other issue is that currently on the Web version of CommitCRM there is currently no option to define a task or appt as 'DONE'. IF we could add that functionality to the web - we could then refer the technician to a form offering the option to add history and a charge perhaps in the same form.

Bottom line - short of emailing things around - this could be one way to nudge the user to capture that time at a critical point - while they're actively working on the ticket and the time spent and work done is fresh in their mind.

[Support Team]

Re: Alerts

These are pretty cool ideas! I'll add these work-flow suggestion to our list. Thanks for the input!

Sherry