Email Notifications

Standard email notifications are sent to users and groups who have subscribed to notifications at the matter level. Umbria global email notifications are used for sending notifications to different user groups at a scheduled time at the firm level. Global email notifications provide the ability to customize any out-of-the-box report templates and generate report notifications specific to a recipient.

Content of the email notification is defined by an XML template file selected in the Email Body Template field.

Additionally, you can specify potential recipients for the email and those who should not receive the email (exclusions). The notification can be sent manually, or on a weekly or monthly basis.

Refer to Alerts for additional information on global email notification requirements.

Standard Email Notifications

The table below lists all standard email notifications.

Email	Definition
Initial Matter Experience	Sends an email asking you to finish a matter experience profile after the matter is open for 7 days.
Mid-Matter Experience	Sends an email to remind you to finish a matter experience profile after the matter is open for 60 days.
End-Matter Experience	Sends an email to remind you to finish a matter experience profile after the matter is closed.
Budget Threshold Warning	Budget threshold notifications are used to notify internal users of the firm when certain budget levels are reached (Billable Values) and/or when a certain number of hours are entered (Entered Values) . The lawyer can then choose to forward the notification to a client. Threshold levels can be set for a whole matter or at a phase code level. For any matter, any number of conditions may be set. Additionally, three threshold levels can be defined to determine the severity of the alert (warning, danger, and critical).
Monthly Performance Report	Sends a monthly performance report email.
Monthly Budget/ Performance Report	Sends a monthly budget performance report email. Provides a comparison between budgeted and actual data.
Weekly Budget/ Performance Report   Weekly Performance Report	Sends a weekly budget performance report email. Provides a comparison between budgeted and actual data.       Sends a a weekly performance report. Provides actual data (without comparison to budget).
No Billing Activity	Sends email notifications if no billing activity is detected.
Expense Report Approval	Sends email notifications when a vendor invoice is approved.
People Report	Sends email notifications of billed and unbilled fees and expenses for timekeepers working on a matter per time periods.
Spend Report	Sends email notifications of unbilled fees and expenses for phase and task codes per times periods.
Target Realization Warning	Sends email notifications when realization drops below a specified target.

Email Notification Templates

Two email notifications templates have placeholders: Budget Threshold Notification and Target Realization Warning.

Budget Threshold Notifications (Billable Values)

Field	Placeholder
	{M.MatterDisplayName}
Budget Name	{BudgetName}
Budget Type	{BudgetType}
Total Budget	{TotalBudget:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Billable Hours	{BillableHours:0}
Billable Amount	{BillableAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Billable Amount %	{BillableAmountPercentage:Percentage}
WIP Amount at Matter Rate	{WIPAmountAtMR:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Budget Remaining	{BudgetRemaining:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Severity	{Severity}

Budget Threshold Notifications (Entered Values)

Field	Placeholder
	{M.MatterDisplayName}
Budget Name	{BudgetName}
Budget Type	{BudgetType}
Total Budget	{TotalBudget:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Entered Hours	{EnteredHours:0}
Entered Amount	{EnteredAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Entered Amount %	{EnteredAmountPercentage:Percentage}
WIP Amount at Matter Rate	{WIPAmountAtMR:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Budget Remaining	{BudgetRemaining:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Severity	{Severity}

Target Realization Warning

Field	Placeholder
	{M.MatterDisplayName}
Scope	{Scope}
Billed Amount	{BilledAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Billed Realization	{BilledRealization:Percentage}
Target Realization	{TargetBilledRealization:Percentage}
Budget	{BudgetAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Actual	{ActualAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Budget Limit	{PercentageTrigger:Percentage}
Budget Spending	{PercentageActual:Percentage}
Budget Remaining	{PercentageRemainingBudget:Percentage}
Hours Limit	{HoursTrigger:0}
Entered Hours	{HoursActual:0}
Severity	{Severity}

Default Email Notifications (Global and Standard)

Target Realization Warning

	{M.MatterDisplayName}
Scope	{Scope}
Billed Amount	{BilledAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Billed Realization	{BilledRealization:Percentage}
Target Realization	{TargetBilledRealization:Percentage}
Budget	{BudgetAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Actual	{ActualAmount:Currency;[M.CurrencyCode];#,##0;N/A}
Budget Limit	{PercentageTrigger:Percentage}
Budget Spending	{PercentageActual:Percentage}
Budget Remaining	{PercentageRemainingBudget:Percentage}
Hours Limit	{HoursTrigger:0}
Entered Hours	{HoursActual:0}
Severity	{Severity}

Default Email Notifications (Global and Standard)

Type	Form Name	Excel Template	Global	Standard
Budget-Matter	Budget ThresholdReached	-		√
	AgedWIPReport	Yes	√
	DormantProBonoMattersReport	Yes	√
	FeeEstimateReport	Yes	√
	PeopleReport	Yes		√
	SpendReport	Yes		√
Performance-Matter	EndMatterExperience	-		√
	InitialMatterReport	-		√
	MidMatterExperienceReport	-		√
	MonthlyPerformanceOnlyReport	-		√
	NoBillingActivity	-		√
	PartnerWeeklyPerformancReport	-		√
	WeeklyPerformanceOnlyReport	-		√

Setting Up Email Notifications

Refer to the list above to view the reports that are global (non-matter-specific).

Templates can a be seeded during the fresh installation in the Seed Data step of the installation wizard. Once seeded, these templates will be available in the Admin Panel.

XML Templates for Global and Standard Email Notifications

XML templates used for email notifications are available in the Admin Panel through the File Customization node at Default → Mailing → Templates.

They are written by the rules defined in the email schema, and the most important elements of this schema are the "attachments," "content," and "repeat" sections, as in the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<email subject="Aged WIP Notification" xmlns:f="http://prosperoware.com/caliban/FileTemplates.xsd" xmlns:q="http://prosperoware.com/caliban/Schema.xsd" xmls="http://prosperoware.com/caliban/Emails.xsd">
	<!--This template is used for sending report about matters with aged WIP (90+ days)-->
	<attachments>
		<f:excel templatePath="~/Default?Mailing?Attachments?AgedWIPReportTemplate">
			<f:sheet displayName="Sheet1" name="Sheet1">
				<f:read>
					<q:sql name="T" result="view">
						<!--Query for the data used to populate excel template-->...
					</q:sql>
				</f:read>
			</f:sheet>
		</f:excel>
	</attachments>
	<content>
		<p>Dear {@DisplayName},</p>
		<p>The following open matter(s) you are responsible of, have aged WIP (90+ days):</p>
	</content>
	<repeat recipientColumn="EMail">
		<!--Recipients query-->
		<q:sql name="Recipients" result="view">...</q:sql>
	</repeat>
</email>

The content section defines what goes inside of the email body, while the read section provides queries for the content if any are needed. The attachments section, as its name implies, is used to generate email attachments. At the moment, Microsoft Excel is the only available format for the attachment. In the element itself, you can specify one or more Excel elements to be attached. Each Excel element must point to an Excel template file using either a path (.../Default/Mailing/Attachments/NameOfTheExcelTemplate) or a template name, i.e., the name of the Excel template as stored in the database. Each Excel element consists of one or more sheet elements that can have multiple source scripts that are used to populate the Excel template.

By default, notifications are sent to people specified in the notification form, but this can be overridden in the repeat section of the template.

<repeat recipientColumn="EMail">
	<!--Recipients query-->
	<q:sql name="Recipients" result="view">
		SELECT DISTINCT U.UserID, U.PersonId, U.EMail, P.DisplayName
		FROM [Caliban].[User] U			
		JOIN [Caliban].[UserGroupMembership] UGM ON U.UserId = UGM.UserId
		JOIN [Caliban].[Group] G ON UGM.GroupId = G.GroupId
		JOIN [Caliban].[EmailNotificationRecipient] ENR ON ENR.UserGroupId = G.GroupId
		JOIN [Caliban].[Person] P ON U.PersonId = P.PersonId
		WHERE ENR.EmailNotificationId = @EmailNotificationId AND ENR.IsDeleted=0
		AND ENR.IsExcluded = 0 AND NULLIF(U.EMail, '') IS NOT NULL AND U.PersonId IS NOT NULL
	</q:sql>
</repeat>

Notification is sent to users returned by the Recipients query. There are some rules that need to be followed when writing this section:

• The SQL script needs to be named Recipients
• Repeat section must have recipientColumn property specified
• This column must be in the SELECT statement of the query
• Value of this column must be an email address

XML Template Customization

Customization can be performed via the Customize button when adding a new notification (see instructions above). You can also customize notifications in the Global Email Notifications node by clicking the Customize report template button. This opens a Customize report template window, where you can copy the text from the Original tab onto the Custom tab and make any desired changes. To discard changes and return to the original template text, click the Revert to Original button in the upper right corner of the Custom tab.

Excel Template

In addition to the mandatory XML template, some notifications include an optional Microsoft Excel template. An example is shown below.

Templates are written using placeholder elements (cells with curly brackets { } ). Placeholders can be used to generate scalar or table values.

For the precedent, you must specify the name of the source script available in the XML template in the read section of the sheet element, and name of the field from the SELECT statement of the same script. In the above example, it means that we are referring to the DisplayName column of the script named ‘P’.

Tables are generated by specifying the ‘{TABLE T}‘ prefix inside of the first cell of the table. The keyword TABLE is saying that we came across a table and that we need to multiply the templated rows as many times as there are records in the result of the script named ‘T’.

Cells can be formatted by entering a colon and one of the following keywords after the name of the column: Date, Leverage, Currency, or Percentage. After this keyword you can optionally specify custom formatting (in the currency example above, this format is used: #,##0). Otherwise, the default format for the type is used. For the currency option, there is also an option to specify the keyword ‘[CurrencyCode]’, which also needs to be part of the ‘T’ script. If this keyword is not specified, the currency is formatted with the default currency code, which is USD.

Formatting Examples

Format	Description	Value
OpenDate:Date;MMM d, yyyy	Date in standard US format	Sep 10, 2015
Fees:Currency;[CurrencyCode];#,##0	Round value without decimal places	$124,423
Hours:#,##0.##	Round value up to 2 decimal places	224.07