Sustainability & Risk / Compliance / Objectives

Compliance Program Managers Managing Notifications to Stakeholders When Critical Dates or Event Statuses Occur

Objective

Whether events follow a recurring schedule or are ad hoc events, they need to be tracked and managed so that they are completed on time. Reminders to the responsible person of upcoming events, and warnings when events are getting off schedule are important ways to ensure that scheduled events are completed on time and are not missed.

Solution

Notification templates are used to automate the sending of email messages. They specify the email subject and message, the message recipients, and the triggering conditions for sending the email. The Business Process Owner for Compliance can define notification templates, either as universal templates that are applied to all compliance programs and requirements, or as a template that is available for Compliance Program Managers to assign to programs and requirements as they see fit.

For example, the Business Process Owner could define a universal notification template that always notifies the responsible person a certain number of days before an event is scheduled to start.

Alternately, Compliance Program Managers can create and assign templates to specific compliance programs and requirements as needed. For example, the Business Process Owner could define separate notifications for upcoming events, missed events, overdue events, completed events, canceled events, or events placed on-hold. The Compliance Program Manager could determine which programs should have these notifications assigned. Once assigned, the notifications are sent automatically to keep all stakeholders informed when the event status changes to the triggering status defined in the template.

Procedures

Defining Notification Templates

  1. The Business Process Owner for Compliance creates universal template if needed. These templates are applied to all compliance programs and their requirements.
  2. The Business Process Owner can create additional templates that are available to the Compliance Program Manager to assign to programs and requirements when needed.

    See Defining Notification Templates

  3. The Compliance Program Manager can define notifications if needed.

Assigning Notification Templates - Process Overview

The following describes the general process that the Compliance Program Manager follows when assigning notification template to compliance programs or requirements:

  • Review the universal templates : If the Business Process Owner for Compliance has set up universal templates that are applied automatically to all compliance programs and their requirements, the Compliance Program Manager can review these templates to assess whether further notifications are needed. See Viewing the Universal Templates.
  • Assign existing notification templates to compliance programs and requirements : Your Business Process Owner for Compliance might have defined additional templates that are not designated as universal templates, but that are available for assignment to specific compliance programs and requirements. These templates are useful for situations that frequently occur. If they are appropriate for the programs and requirements you are working with, using them can save you the time of creating a new template. See Assigning or Unassigning Existing Notifications for a Compliance Program or Requirement.
  • Bulk assign notification templates : You can review all compliance programs and requirements assigned to a notification template, and bulk assign the notification to multiple compliance programs and requirements. This is the quickest way to assign the same notification to multiple records at once. See Bulk Assigning Notification Templates.

Managing Notification Templates for Events

  • Activating/Deactivating Notification Templates when generating scheduled events : When you generate events for a requirement, you can select Yes or No for the Activate Notifications? field. This setting determines whether or not email notifications associated with the event's compliance program or requirement will be added to each generated event. See Generating Scheduled Events.
  • Creating notifications when manually adding an event : If a requirement does not follow a regularly occurring schedule, you can manually add the event, rather than generating it from a recurring schedule. When you manually add an event, you can select whether or not to create notifications for the event by setting the Create Notifications? field to Yes or No. See Adding and Editing Events for a Requirement.
  • Regenerating events after assigning new notifications : When you assign a notification template to a compliance program or requirement, the notification template will be applied to newly generated events for this program. To apply this template to future events that are already generated for a program, the events must be re-generated. See To Generate or Regenerate Scheduled Events for a Requirement.

Managing Notifications

  • Review all compliance programs or requirements assigned to a notification: To assess whether there are notifications that are not assigned to any program or requirement, and to review which programs are assigned, you can select a template and see all its assignments. See Viewing All Compliance Programs and Requirements for a Template.
  • Unassign Notifications for a compliance program or requirement: Sometimes a notification is no longer applicable for a specific program or requirement. In these cases, you can unassign it. See Unassigning Notification Templates.