Notify Analyst App to notify an Extended MA Support Group

IT Monkey

Use the Notify Analyst App to notify an Extended MA Support Group (via it's related mapping) when that MA Status goes to In Progress... Currently, the Notify Analyst plugin has an MA In Progress Notification. This workflow currently points at the 'Activity Implementer' but there is no ability to point it at an Extended Support Group.  It would be most excellent if there was a checkbox that said 'Use Extended MA Support Group instead of Activity Implementer for Notifications' as an option for the 'Notification Template to use when Activity Status becomes In-Progress' area of the app. This would then change the workflow to use the MA Support Group mappings for In Progress notifications. IT would be awesome!

seth_coussens

Just to make sure I have this clear. The request is for Notify Analyst to support the extended support group (which it already does for support group assignment changes) for 'In Progress' notifications. Where as currently it only sends the 'In Progress' notification to the User or Group set in the Activity Implementer field.

Basically, the desire is to notify the entire Support Group of the status change.

[Deleted User]

Yes, that is how I understood the feature request from the customer originally.  

Adrian_Paech

Yes Please! Gets my Vote. This would be huge for us!

Thanks,

Adrian

Michael_Baldry

This would be very nice. We've implemented a workaround for this by manually making a small change to the Notify Analyst workflow XML, but would much prefer for it to be built-in, so that:
1. The behaviour is shown in the Notify Analyst settings. Right now, if we edit a setting in there, these changes are lost.
2. The change doesn't get overwritten by any future updates.

Nicholas_Velich

We have a PowerShell/SCOrch solution ready to go that takes care of this. Can post this in the Downloads page until it's built into the Notify Analyst App itself.

Adrian_Paech

Michael_Baldry said:

This would be very nice. We've implemented a workaround for this by manually making a small change to the Notify Analyst workflow XML, but would much prefer for it to be built-in, so that:
1. The behaviour is shown in the Notify Analyst settings. Right now, if we edit a setting in there, these changes are lost.
2. The change doesn't get overwritten by any future updates.

Michael,
Any chance you could post up the changes made to the workflow XML. are the customisations specific to your environment, or could they be used anywhere?
Thanks!
Adrian

Michael_Baldry

I couldn't find a way to post the XML and keep it readable, and it may have GUIDs that are specific to our environment, so here's a quick description of the change instead.

By default, the criteria is:

        SupportGroup is null, and changes to not-null

    OR

        Pre Support Group <> Post Support Group

We changed it to this:

        Activivity status (pre) <> In-progress

        AND

        Activivity status (post)  = In-progress

    OR

        Status is In-progress

        AND

        SupportGroup is not null (post state, not pre)

        AND

        Pre SupportGroup <> Post SupportGroup

We specifically want the notification to go out to the Support Group when it's ready to act on, rather than when it gets created, so it doesn't send anything if it's not in-progress. If you want to be notified on both of those, you could remove the last "Status is in-progress" check.

With all that said, I wouldn't recommend doing it this way, since it won't be supported. Whenever the Cireson solution gets posted, I will probably switch our environment to use it, assuming that it works the same way that we have it set up now.

Adrian_Paech

Thanks Michael. Agreed, I will only put this in if absolutely necessary, and look forward to the updated version including this feature.

Cheers,

Adrian

Jacky_Gross

Seems like this is what I've been searching for: "The manual activity settings in Notify Analyst does not allow to trigger notifications when the MA status is In Progress for Custom Manual Activity Support Group. The emails are sent for all the MA no matter the status (on creation) or only if the Support group is updated. This has an impact for the serial MA (dependency).
I would like to have the option to skip notification if MA status is not In-Progress."

For the moment I resolved this by using Orchestrator. I would also like to have a built-in functionality from Cireson Notify Analyst. Hope to see it in the next release.

Best regards.

Brian_Winter

Any ETA for this feature?  Trying to weigh if it's worth the time to implement an interim solution.

Adrian_Mataisz

Yeah. I'm with all here. We use Orchestrator and SCSM AD groups forced into Implementer field and emails get send when the MA goes "In progress". We use groups and users by the Notify Analyst app should handle all scenarios.

Brad_McKenna

@Nicholas_Velich Is the PowerShell/Scorch solution still available? I did not find this in the Downloads section, and we are in a need for this solution. As the current Notify Analyst configuration of notifying on Creation (instead of Status = In Progress) is causing issues/frustration for our users within our environment.

Thanks!

Brad

Nicholas_Velich

@Brad_McKenna Here is the PowerShell/SCOrch solution I typically use to add this feature. Enjoy!

Adrian_Paech

Hello,
just wondering if there has been any progress on this feature request, and whether it might be considered for a future update?
Regards,
Adrian

Brad_McKenna

Thank you @Nicholas_Velich! Appreciate you sharing it and the phenomenal response. We greatly appreciate it...I now know what I'll be tinkering with tonight!

Adrian_Paech

Re Michael Baldry's guide to modifying the XML to enable notifications to the support group when it switches to "In Progress"

For those who are interested on how to do this. (even though its not supported by Cireson).

I have attached a text file with the exact XML that needs to be changed (both before and after the change).

Regards,

Adrian

Mike_Kinney

Any update on this?

Brian_Winter

Adrian_Paech said:

Re Michael Baldry's guide to modifying the XML to enable notifications to the support group when it switches to "In Progress"

For those who are interested on how to do this. (even though its not supported by Cireson).

I have attached a text file with the exact XML that needs to be changed (both before and after the change).

Regards,

Adrian

So we implemented this in our QA environment and it's working just as expected.  Kudos!!

Before we proceed with Production, a few questions:

1) Why doesn't Cireson support this? - seems like a very simple change.

2) Are there any risks or side-effects?

Adrian_Paech

Glad it's working
The Risk is:
If you then go make any changes to the notify analyst settings pane afterwards, all of the custom changes made to the xml will be reset, and you have to reapply the manual xml changes as provided.
so just keep this in mind.

Im guessing it's not supported because it's prone to error. (XML can be a bit fiddly) Similar to putting customisations in the portal. If it does.no work, they can't be expected to troubleshoot the issue to get it working.
Though, 
Maybe someone from Cireson can provide the specifics.
Cheers,
Adrian

Brad_McKenna

Looks like this feature was released today. Will have to get in my lab for testing!

Unfortunately the release notes currently are only showing within the zip download, not the release notes kb.

notify analyst 7.6.2012.20 Release Notes

-updated license client dll

-added in-progress workflow for MA support group

-digitally signed

seth_coussens

This has been completed! Thanks for all the feedback. If you feel a certain subset of these features weren't met for you, please open a new feature request specifically for that! Thanks.