The application supports two different notification formats: template-based and message-based. For message-based notifications, the outbound message contains the message that is delivered. It contains the fixed and variable information and comes from the message catalog. For template-based, the outbound message contains the data necessary for an external system to create the notification. In this model, the external system owns the message format and fixed content and uses the data from the system for the variable information. The notification type’s business object has an option that indicates the format. This business object option is used by the programs that initiate notifications from the application. The programs that initiate a notification and need to know the notification type’s format and must have the responsibility to populate the correct elements before calling the create notification plug-in spot. These programs know how to prepare notification information based on the format before calling the notification type’s BO create notification plug-in spot. That plug-in spot’s API has elements that support both notification formats.