Technical Overview

The Notifications Framework is used to send notifications to interested parties (determined by the consumer setup), via a notification channel (such as email, SMS, alerts or worklists) based on some transaction performed by a consuming application (the consumer). For example, if an employee wants to share some data with a person via email and hence grants access to some of his/her data (as is the case with Delegated Access functionality), then the consumer can use the Notifications Framework to send email notifications to the person.

The content to be sent to the concerned parties must be created as a Generic template, which is then used to create the notification. The templates are grouped together under a common consumer. Based on the consumer setup, valid templates for a transaction are selected, and a notification item is created against each valid template.

Finally, the items are checked for any errors or warnings, and if the items are found to be eligible for sending, then they are sent using the People Tools Notification Classes provided (PT_WF_NOTIFICATION.Notification App Class). The following diagram illustrates the relationships between the components of the framework:

This example illustrates the Notifications Framework High Level Architecture.

Notifications Framework High Level Architecture

In the diagram above, the AbstractNotification class acts as a layer of encapsulation over the NotificationManager, which is the gateway for all consumers using the Notifications Framework. This is the Abstract Base class that consumers of the Notifications Framework should extend and implement in order to minimize consumer effort in sending notifications. After all processing is completed the NotificationRouter calls the applicable Notification Channel to deliver the notification type item/items created.

This example illustrates Notifications Framework Communications.

Notifications Framework Communications Diagram

Notifications Framework Entities:

Entity Record Notes

Notification Request Header

SCC_NTFREQ_HDR

N/A

Notification Request Detail

SCC_NTFREQ_DTL

N/A

NotificationRequestDetailER

SCC_NTF_DTL_ER

The NotificationRequestDetailER Entity is used to support multiple recipients like TO, CC, BCC for Email. This entity allows the framework to:

  1. Store the multiple Email TO, CC, BCC recipients.

  2. Link to the NotificationRequestDetail entity.

When an Email notification is to be sent to multiple recipients (TO, CC, BCC), the consumer needs to set the notification context property SCC_NTF_AUDCE to ‘ER’, EMPLID to null, and populate all the below properties as appropriate:


/* Multiple Recipients for Email (To,CC,BCC) */
   property array of string arrEMPLID_TO;
   property array of string arrEMPLID_CC;
   property array of string arrEMPLID_BCC;

Notification Request Item

SCC_NTFREQ_ITM

N/A

Notification Recipient

SCC_NTFREQ_RECP

N/A

Notification Data

SCC_NTFREQ_DATA

N/A

Notification Reminder

SCC_NTFREQ_RMDR

The Notification Reminder Entity is only used when a reminder notification is created for a previously generated notification. The Notification Reminder entity allows the framework to:

  1. Store the date(s) when Reminder(s) were created for a notification.

  2. Link the original notification with the reminder notification.

This example illustrates the Entity Hierarchy for Notifications.

Entity Hierarchy for Notifications