Double notifications for Review Activities

Eivind_Osbak

Hi.

From time to time, users recieve duplicate notifications when added as reviewers on review activity.
Most only get the one, but some get duplicates.

The log from Notify Analyst app only shows one beeing sent. They are only added once as reviewers.

Any thoughts?

Shane_White

@Nick_Flint

You are exactly right, I have been going through this with Carol in a ticket she has raised and we have made some progress.

The issue seems to occur when you have a PowerShell Activity running before the review activity so seems to just be a timing issue.

If you add Start-Sleep -Seconds 45 onto the end of the PowerShell activity this should fix your issues.

Thanks,
Shane.

Adam_Dzyacky

What are your settings around:

• "Send when activity moves to In-Progress"
• "Send when Reviewer is Added"

If these are both enabled, I have to imagine this leads to the reasoning (for Cireson) for introducing the "delay field" that is available here as well.

Eivind_Osbak

These are my current settings:

Tyson_Arzt

Not to revive an old thread, but was this ever resolved? We are starting to see this occur in our environment as well. 

Martin_Strbavy

We have exactly same problem... How did you solve that? what was the issue? Some users are getting 2/4 or 8 emails

Carol_Morrell

We are new to using the portal and have those same Review Activity Settings and often get 2 email notifications going out at the same time for the same Review Activity - how was this solved?

Tom_Hendricks

I can't offer any help here, but I can confirm that we are seeing double emails as well, and not just with Review Activities.  Also with escalation and assignment emails on work items.  I do not see any clear pattern as far as why some are doubled and some are not.

Jeff_Lang

We have seen similar Duplicate emails but for Manual Activities not review activities.

For the Manual activities if an assigned user was added while the activity was pending, then the activity went in progress before the workflow to send the notification ran the workflow picked up the user was added but that the activity was in progress (even though when the user was added it was still pending) and sent the email, but when the workflow that saw the activity go in progress kicked off it saw the user was already there and also sent a notification.

not sure if this is whats also happening with the review activities or not as we don't use the notify analyst app for review activities, we have a separate system for those

Carol_Morrell

Thank you - I can't work it out either, but it seems to be a common issue.  I just tested it twice and got duplicate review activities out once!  I've watched it through - the SR was created at 09:07; the Set Approver task went to Pending at 09:08, then In Prog at 09:08, then completed at 09:08 (we have a powershell script which run as part of the set Approver task in the Template); the Approve task went to Pending at 09:09, then In Prog at 09:09 and 1 email came out at 09:09. But I did the same thing - the SR was created at 09:16; the Set Approver task went to Pending at 09:16, then In Prog at 09:17, then completed at 09:17; the Approve task went to Pending at 09:17, then In Prog at 09:17 and 1 email came out at 09:17 and another at 09:18!.  It is definitely a timing issue and seems like the notify Analyst settings are picking it up twice if the Approver is set at almost the same time as the Approval task goes to In Prog.  I am lost as to what to do to correct this - any ideas??

Tom_Hendricks

I think we need to submit Incidents to Cireson at this point.  We're all seeing it in various scenarios but it's coming from the same product and I do not think we, as customers, will have many options for correcting it.

Nick_Flint

I'm seeing this for MA and RA. For us, it seems like it is centered around SRs with a AC activity that is running a power shell script that is creating the MA/RA. I'm going to do a bit more testing and then open an IR with Cireson.

Shane_White

@Nick_Flint

You are exactly right, I have been going through this with Carol in a ticket she has raised and we have made some progress.

The issue seems to occur when you have a PowerShell Activity running before the review activity so seems to just be a timing issue.

If you add Start-Sleep -Seconds 45 onto the end of the PowerShell activity this should fix your issues.

Thanks,
Shane.

Nick_Flint

@Shane_White
Thanks for the confirmation. I had previously implemented a 30 second wait to allow the activity statuses time to updated before the PSA completed. I've updated to 45 seconds and early testing did result in only one notification.

Thank you!

Carol_Morrell

@Shane_White

I have been doing some extensive testing on this today and can confirm the sleep of 45 seconds added at the end of the Powershell activity works.  The duplicate review activity email notifications are now a thing of the past!  Thank you for your help.

Nick_Flint

@Shane_White: Here's a variant: 

We are adding Manual Activities within parallel activities to service requests and setting the support group via a PowerShell Activity. This triggers both the Update Workflow and the In-Progress workflow within seconds and the support group receives the same notification twice within seconds of each other. 

Is there any way to suppress the update workflow for Manual Activities if the activity is not In Progress?

Shane_White

Hi @Nick_Flint

Have you set the tickbox for 'Skip notification if Activity Status is not In-Progress' for Manual Activity, and added a delay at the end of the PS Script?

Thanks,
Shane.

Nick_Flint

Yes. I believe that setting only applies to assignment changes for an individual.

Nick_Flint

I think a 'Skip notification if Activity Status is not In-Progress' option is needed for Support Group changes as well.

Shane_White

I would probably raise that as a Feature Request then