Sending Email notifications for Time Valuation Alerts

[NeeleshKamath]

If you have a business scenario where you would like to not just send alerts to managers, admins via time valuations but also email notifications to respective managers , admins then this blog is meant for you

There could be various uses cases like:

• Alert managers, in case their employees have collected a certain amount of overtime hours (e.g. 40) over a certain time period
• Late Comers, Early Goer alerts to managers
• Rest period violation alerts
• And the list goes on

We all know to create innovative and creative time valuations to send these alerts. But these alerts are restricted to Time management UIs like Time Sheet UI, Admin Alerts UI etc from where managers and HR Admins have to view them.

Ever wondered how we can further extend them in such a way that they not just see them in UI but also receive meaningful emails. Many partner friends had reached out to me seeking a way to achieve this

Well I have an idea and a solution to do this via Integration center and custom MDF. Go through my blog below to explore the solution

Disclaimer: This is a custom solution using IC and Custom MDF. Please do your due diligence in testing them and deploying them accordingly

To demonstrate this, I would use a use case of late comer's time valuation alerts. In General, this can be used for any time valuation alerts.

Create a custom MDF to store late comers info

Add two custom fields

External code : type user to store user for whom alert is created

Cust_date : date field to store the alert date.

On Save rule attached to above MDF

In below rule you look up time valuation alert with group code relevant to your later comer info in time valuation . Please note all alerts are stored in MDF objects. For example a time valuation alert will be stored in MDF object ‘Time Valuation Alert’

For example I have configured the late comer alert logic in the below time valuation. The time type group below "LATECHECK" has the info if the employee was late or not on a particular day.

Please note : This is part of time valuation configurations and I would not repeat the steps to create time valuation alerts as this would be beyond the scope of this blog. For now just remember the points I said above

Hence the rule will do a look up on Time Valuation Alert MDF Object which has a time type group with external code “LATECHECK”

Post Save Rule to Send Alert

Write the below rule for sending alerts based on the alert date set on Custom MDF.

Attach the rule to Post Save hook of custom mdf

Final Integration Center

Create a SF to SF Object Integration Center Report with  below details

Starting entity is USER

Target Entity is the custom MDF (as created above)

Map the user id field of USER Object to external code of MDF

Operation: Upsert Multiple OR Upsert Single

Filter: You can add filter employees based on Job info attributes like time recording profile, Legal Entity etc.

Run the IC on a daily basis.

How this works?

1. IC runs and creates/updates MDF on a daily basis
2. On save rule is called on MDF and checks if there is a late comer alert with relevant time type group that day. If yes store the date
3. If the date = today, an email is sent on the same day

TESTING

The sample employee clocks in late today say on May 1st 2024

You see an alert in the UI

Now we need to notify the managers not just from UI but also send an email notification

An equivalent MDF record is created for this alert which can be viewed from manage data screen as shown.

Now Run The IC to map this record to custom MDF which sends emails

The custom MDF is updated for this user

And an alert email is also sent once IC is run

Say another employee also records a late comer event on May 1st

If you have a similar requirement at your client, you can explore this method and test it

If you have any further ways to improve this, please do comment

Thanks

Neelesh