Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notifications

You can set up Custom Processes that use a Documents, Jobs, Clients, Tasks or Practice Activity view in FYI to trigger the process.

For practices on the Elite Plan, Custom Processes can also use a Employee, Time or Invoices view in FYI to trigger the process.

If you want the process to trigger for all Documents, Jobs, Clients, Tasks or Practice Activity events you would select a view that shows "All". If you want the process to trigger for selected Documents, Jobs, Clients, Tasks or Practice Activity events you would use a saved view that has filters applied. This can be a system view, or you can set up your own views to use (refer to Saving Changes to the View Layout, Modifying and Deleting Views).

There is a limit of 5000 set on the number of Documents. Jobs, Clients, Tasks or Practice Activity Events that a process will run for. If there are more than 5000 that you need to run the process on (for example more than 5000 documents) you will need to run the process again to run it for the items that were not included in the initial run. Setting the automation process to Run only once per Document, Job, or Client runs the process but excludes the items it has already run for.

When using a view to trigger a Custom Process, you can set up a Summary Notification step so that the notifications are sent out automatically as a summary instead of as individual notifications.

Examples of Custom Processes Using Views and Summary Notifications

• Use the Document - View Filters to identify documents that are "Pending Approval". You set up the Custom Process to send out a notification to each of the relevant approvers, for example, every 12 hours. Depending on the user's settings, this will get sent as an email with a link the Approver can click. The Link will take the Approver directly to the Documents list, automatically filtered to show only the emails/documents that are "Pending Approval" and with their name selected as the Approver. A notification is also sent as a reminder. This can be sent out as a Summary Notification. For details on this, refer to Pending Approval Notification and Client Upload Notification.
  
  
• Use the Client - View Filters when sending out newsletters. For example, if you had Client Custom Fields of "Opt in" and "Newsletters", you can set up a Client view with the clients that have these selected. You can then select this view as the Custom Automation Client - View Filters so only those clients receive the newsletter created by the Custom Process. The Client view gives you an easy way to check the clients who will receive the newsletter before sending it.
  
  
• Use the Document - View Filters and a Summary Notification for the Tax Assessment process where you want to customise who gets notified. For example, if you have two offices with different administration teams and would like the admin officer of the respective office to be notified of the Tax Assessments rather than the Manager or Partner. See below Sending Notification to other than Manager or Partner.
  
  
• Use the Job - View Filters and a Summary Notification to send out a daily Summary Notification if a critical change has been made to Jobs. For example, if a Job has moved to a certain State such as "Ready for Billing", or if the Due Date of a Job has changed. You can set up a Custom Process to send a Summary Notification to the people who need to be notified about the changes.
  
  
• Use the Task - View Filters and a Summary Notification to send out a daily Summary Notification of overdue tasks. Refer to Overdue Task Reminder.
  
  
• Use the Practice Activity - View Filters to send out a scheduled Summary Notification, for example, to an FYI Admin of any events that have a Status of "Failure" or "Action Required". Refer also to Practice Activity.

The following explains how to set up a Custom Process using a View and a Summary Notification. Refer also to the examples in Examples of Custom Processes using Views and Summary Notification.

Determine the View to Use as the Filter or Set up the View

Make sure you have the view in place to do the filter. This needs to be a view in the Documents, Jobs, Clients or Tasks list.

An FYI Admin, or a user in a User Group that has Permissions enabled for Views (refer to Managing User Groups) can set up a view that isolates the scenario you are looking to monitor or to send reminder notifications on. Depending on what you want the view to trigger in the process, the view can also include filters and search criteria. Refer to Saving Changes to the View Layout, Modifying and Deleting Views.

When saving a new view, you can specify Automations only so it only appears in Custom Processes and is not included as a standard view in the Documents, Jobs, Clients or Tasks lists.

Note: If the Summary Notification is running on a Document View filtered to Emails and the "Collapse threads into a single record" toggle is enabled, the email may not display in the View. This prevents the automation from running against it. By disabling the "Collapse threads into a single record" toggle all emails will display and be available to the automation. Refer to Managing Document and Email Threads.

Set up the Custom Process

The following is a Custom Process created to show an example of sending a Summary Notification for documents marked as "Pending Approval.

Name

Ensure the name describes the process. The Name is included in the Notification in FYI and, depending on the user's settings, in the email notification that is sent.

Description

A description of the Process can be added to the Description. This gives users context for the Process and a description of what the Custom Process does. The first three lines of the description added in the Description also display in the Automation Dashboard under the Custom Process name and in the Processes List View.

1. In the Description field, click on Click to add description. A pane opens for the text to be entered.
   
   
2. Add the description. Formatting can be applied to the text by clicking the + button on the left-hand side of the pane. Any formatting only shows when editing the Process, not on the Automation Dashboard.
   
3. Click outside the pane to close it.
   
   
4. To edit again, click over the text that has been entered.

Trigger

You can use a View as the Filter when the Trigger is "Manual" or "Schedule". For details, refer to Trigger in Setting up Custom Processes.

Filter

The Filter determines what information is monitored or included in the process.
Click the edit icon to display the Filter Items.

In the Filter Items, the "Client - Select Filters" Filter Type does not use a view. For details on the Client filter refer to Setting up Custom Processes.

The other options are to filter using a view.

To filter using a View for the Documents, Jobs, Clients or Tasks list, set the Filter Type as "Document - View Filters", "Job - View Filters",  "Client - View Filters" or "Task - View Filters".

View
Select the view you want the process to monitor or to send reminder notifications on. A view must be selected, and the view must be marked as Available For Automations. Refer to Managing Views.

The following is an example of selecting a "Document - View Filters" and the view has been selected. 

Click the Open View icon to open the view in a new tab.

Run Only Once Per Document/Job/Client/Task
This option determines whether or not the automation sends the notification about a Document, Job, Client or Task only once.

For example, when sending notifications of documents that need to be approved, you would usually set this so Approvers will be sent further emails or notifications if a document is still pending approval. This means the Approvers only have to refer to the last notification to see what they currently need to approve. So for this example, you would remove the checkmark for Run Only Once Per Document.

If you want to send a notification to approvers only once that a document needs approval (that is, when it is initially set to "Pending Approval") you would checkmark Run Only Once Per Document.

In the same way, if the Process was sending notifications when a document has come back from digital signing, you would checkmark Run Only Once Per Document.

If a Job has the Job State set to a specific value, you would usually only want to send the notification once, so you would checkmark Run Only Once Per Job.

When the Filter Type is set as Client View, this is shown as Run Only One Per Client.

Where a Process is sending, for example, a daily Summary Notification of Tasks that are overdue, you would usually remove the checkmark for Run Only One Per Task so that further emails or notifications are sent if the Task is still not completed.

When the Filter Type is set as Practice Activity View, this is shown as Run Only One Per Document (that is, Run Once Per Practice Activity Event).

Note: There is a limit of 5000 set on the number of Documents. Jobs, Clients, Tasks or Practice Activity Events that a process will run for. If there are more than 5000 that you need to run the process on (for example more than 5000 documents) you will need to run the process again to run it for the items that were not included in the initial run. Setting Run Only Once Per Document/Job/Client runs the process but excludes the items it has already run for.

Inherit Job on the Custom Process

When the Filter Type is set as Document or Task View Filters, the Inherit Job option is included in the process.

When Inherit Job is ticked, the Partner, Manager or Custom User Role is taken from the job selected for the Document or Task when the process step is set up. The process will then use the relative Partner or Manager for the following:

• For the Sender of an email
• For the recipient of an email (when Partner Email or Manager Email is selected)
• For the workflow Owner
• For the workflow Approver
• For a Task Assignee

If the Job does not have a Partner/Manager/Custom User Role, then this is picked up from the Client settings.

When Inherit Job is disabled, this picks up the Client’s Partner/Manager/Custom User Role value in the “Sender” field.

In the example above of sending a Summary Notification for documents that are "Pending Approval", no documents are created for this process so Inherit Job is unticked.

Add the Step for a Summary Notification

Summary Notification can be used when an FYI view is used to trigger the process.

To set up the step for the Summary Notification:

1. Click Add Step.
   
   
2. Select FYI.
   
   
3. Select Summary Notification.
   
   
4. For Notify User, select who you want to send the Summary Notification. Merge Fields can be used to select specific users, for example, the Partner role on a client. Refer to Including Merge Fields in Automations.
   
   
5. Optionally add a Custom Message.

Notify User

Notify User can be set to a specific person. This can be set as any active user, by selecting the user from the drop-down.

Alternatively, Notify User can be set as a user relative to the Document, Client, Job or Task. For example, Merge Fields can be used to select the User who is assigned to the Client or Job such as the Manager, Partner, or Custom User Role such as "Accountant". Refer to Including Merge Fields in Automations. To create a Custom User role, refer to Custom User Roles.

To notify a relative User, click the Merge Field Icon. The Merge Field window will open. Expand the section to display the available Merge Fields and select the relevant merge field. For example, select "User" from Trigger Document Approver section to notify the User assigned as the Document Approver.

Note: The Merge Field Sections available depend on the Filter view, previous steps in the process, your practice integrations and your FYI subscription plan. For example, Trigger Job Merge Fields are only available where the Automation Process Filter is a Job View, or a Create Job step is included in the process.

Custom Message

You can optionally add a Custom Message to the Summary Notification. In the email and Notification in FYI, the message will display below the link that is sent.

Click Custom Message to set this to "Yes" and enter the text you want to include.


The following is an example of a step added to send the Summary Notification to the "Document Approver".

When the Summary Notification is triggered, the relevant users as specified as the Notify User receive a notification.  Depending on the user's settings, this will also get sent as an email. The notification and the email show the relevant number of emails and documents that triggered the process.

For examples of the notification and the email for a notification of documents that are pending approval, and how the link is used, refer to Summary Notification in Reviewing and Approving Emails and Documents.

Alter Document Step

Another option that is available for a Custom Process using a View is the Alter Document step. Refer to Process Step Details - Alter Document.

Changing the Filter on a Process that already has Steps added

When editing a Process that already has Steps added, if you change the selected View in the Filter, a check is made that the correct type of View has been selected for the Steps and a message is displayed if it is not.

Sending Process Notifications to Users other than Manager or Partner

The following explains how to set up a Custom Process for sending out a notification of a Tax Assessment automation to users other than a Manager or Partner, for example, to the administrator of one of two different offices.

1. Save two document views with the filters set as a combination of:
   The respective partners of each of the two offices
      and
   The Name search containing the relevant words such as "Tax Assessment"
   
   
2. Within each of the Tax Assessment automations, in the create step for the Word or the Email, set the Approver to be the "Partner".
   
   
3. Configure scheduled Custom Process automations with the filter based on each of the document views.
   
   
4. Within each of these Custom Process automations enable a step "Summary Notification" which is directed to the appropriate administrator for each office.