Notifications: What Causes Them to Trigger?

Reference about assessment notifications and how they are triggered.

4 min read

Only superusers can view or make changes to notification settings. Assessment managers and others who take part in assessments may be interested in understanding how notifications are triggered.

The following tables summarize which events cause notification emails to be sent, and to whom. The notification names refer to the “Event Types” shown in the Notifications Setup panel on the Settings page, as shown:

Organizational Assessment Notifications

To understand the table below, it is important to understand the impact of parent-child unit relationships on assessments. If an assessment includes parents and their children, then the parent surveys cannot be final acknowledged until all child surveys are completed and finalized. The final acknowledgment button for the parent survey won’t show up until this condition is satisfied.

The parent-child relationship is only relevant for surveys within the same assessment. If you created two separate assessments and one includes a parent of a unit in the other assessment, there is no dependency between those surveys because they aren’t in the same assessment.

EventNotification NameSent To Whom?
Publish Assessment (from the Settings page)Assessment PublishedIT Staff, Assessment Managers of each unit included
Launch SurveySurvey LaunchedIT Staff, OU Head, Host Delegates (if there are any) of the target unit
Delegate a question category (from unit questions) to a userQuestion Category Delegate AddedThe targeted delegate
Unit questions locked; host categorizations lockedNo notification
Unit Questions acknowledgedNo notification
Host Categorization acknowledgedNo notification
Prefinal Acknowledge survey of OU with no parent or childrenSurvey CompletedOU Head of the target unit
Prefinal Acknowledge (child) survey that has an open parent surveySurvey CompletedOU Head of the (child) unit
Prefinal acknowledge parent survey with open child surveyNo notification(The parent survey
Prefinal acknowledge of child survey with parent waitingSurvey CompletedOU Head of child unit
Final Acknowledge survey (no parent or child)Survey FinalizedSuperusers; OU Head, Assessment Manager, IT Staff of the target unit
Final Acknowledge child survey (parent is still open)Survey FinalizedSuperusers; OU Head, Assessment Manager, IT Staff of the target unit
Final Acknowledge child survey with parent waiting (ie the parent survey has been prefinal acknowledged)Survey Finalized (of child OU); Survey Completed (of parent OU)Survey Finalized to Superusers; OU Head, Assessment Manager, IT Staff of child unit Survey Completed (regarding the Parent OU) to OU Head of parent unit
Final Acknowledge parent surveySurvey FinalizedSuperusers; OU Head, Assessment Manager, IT Staff of parent unit
15 days have passed since the assessment was created, but it has not yet expired or been completed.Survey StaleOU Head and Assessment Manager of target unit
A superuser edits a question that’s part of an ongoing survey and updates the question snapshots.Assessment UpdatedAssessment Manager

Note that in the Survey Launch dialog, you can choose to turn these notifications on or off for each role. The default is to notify all three. However, if any of these notifications are explicitly disabled on the Settings page, the Survey Launch dialog will not override that.

To enable the Survey Stale Notification, you should email support@saltycloud.com to request it. You can also specify a different number of days (the default is 15).

For more info about how to trigger this event, see: What are question snapshots and why would I update them?

Application Assessment Notifications

EventNotification NameSent to Whom?
Create Assessment (from Assessment Page) or Publish Assessment (from Settings page)Assessment LaunchedIT Staff, Assessment Manager of unit owning the application
Launch SurveySurvey LaunchedIT Staff, OU Head of unit owning the app; Delegate (application owner)
Delegate a question category to a userQuestion Category Delegate AddedThe targeted delegate
All questions locked; classification lockedNo notification
Questions acknowledged; classification acknowledged (by Assessment Manager)Survey FinalizedSuperusers; OU Head, IT Staff, Assessment Manager of unit owning the application
15 days have passed since created but has not yet expired or been completed.Survey StaleOU Head and Assessment Manager of unit owning the application
A superuser edits a question that’s part of an ongoing survey and updates question snapshots.Assessment UpdatedAssessment Manager of unit owning the application

To enable the Survey Stale Notification, you should email support@saltycloud.com to request it. You can also specify a different number of days (the default is 15).

For more info about how to trigger this event, see: What are question snapshots and why would I update them?

Third-Party Vendor Product Assessments

EventNotification NameSent to Whom?
Questions acknowledged.Survey FinalizedSuperusers; Assessment Manager of unit requesting the assessment
Delegate a question category to a user (this is only possible from the internal link to the vendor survey)Question Category Delegate AddedThe targeted delegate
15 days have passed since created but has not yet expired or been completed.Survey StaleAssessment Manager of unit requesting the assessment
A superuser edits a question that’s part of an ongoing survey.Assessment UpdatedAssessment Manager of unit requesting the assessment

Typically, vendor surveys are not filled out internally, so it would be unusual to use delegation on a vendor survey.

To enable the Survey Stale Notification, you should email support@saltycloud.com to request it. You can also specify a different number of days (the default is 15).

For more info about how to trigger this event, see: What are question snapshots and why would I update them?

See also:

What are notifications?

Customizing Notifications

Working With Notification Variables

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