Email notification for W-4 changes

Not difiicult, have done it for clients and a fairly simple process. Will required mod to javascipt in ESS

Gary, which file we need to modify? Do you send email notification through processflow? Thank you!

If you are UNIX you can just use the EMAILfunction that is available in ESS, if you are Windows you will need to create a flow becuase the EMAIL function creates a popup window for the email and is not seamless.

Gary,

Are you able (and willing) to provide any additional details on the steps that we must take in order to be able to perform this email notification successfully (on Windows)?

We have this same issue with W-4, Direct Deposit and Address Change notifications too. However, not only are we new to ESS/MSS, but even newer to process flow. Any guidance you can provide would be extremely appreciated.

(We run 9.0 Apps, Env & Security, on Windows box and use Process Flow Professional.)

TIA!!

TBonney, if your EMSS version is 9.0.1, Lawson deliver the processflow codes for direct depoist, address changes, and time entry emial notification.(but No for w4l) If your EMSS is under 9.0.1, emails are generated by email.exe CGI program. If you want all email notifications through process flow, I recommend you upgrade to 9.0.1 because that functionality has been added to EMSS product. You can read the Article ID# 5258357. Before I upgraded to 9.0.1., we have modified the time entry to send email through processflow. But it is even more convenient if processflow come with EMSS product. But it is not included W4 form. The W4 page need to be customized, and a java code is needed.

TBonny, if you use the EMSS below 9.0.1, the emails notification is generated by email.exe CGI program by default which means it will pop up the email screen to ask end-users to send out email. If you use the EMSS 9.0.1 above and you also have processflow, the EMSS will untlize process flow and send out emails through processflow. Using the processflow designer, you hve the flexibility to add or change the delivered solutions from Lawson. FYI.

We're very new to Process Flow and have never built a custom trigger before. Would this notification through PF require us to build a custom trigger? If so, would anyone be able to provide any pointers on how to do so to accomplish this goal of notification when a W-4, direct deposit of Address Change is made by an employee through EMSS? Thank you.

I have not looked at the tables but I would not create a custom trigger - too much maintenance. You could consider a scheduled processflow that runs regularly - looking at the date stamp and hopefully time stamp in the table. If there is just a date-stamp field then run once a day and send the email for any records with a date equal to addDay(today,-1) ... This will allow you to look for changes yesterday and send an email.

If there is a TIME stamp then you could run the flow multiple times a day and look for current date/time and adjust to 4 hours earlier. Grab records greater than the adjusted time stamp. If nothing exists it will query with 0 records and end... If there are records it could send an email.

This would not be a very difficult processflow to create and once you create it you should be able to use for other types of information that gets changed in THE SYSTEM... (I stress this because the email would send even if the change is entered by someone in payroll. If there is a user-stamp then you might be able to look at the value there to decide if you send the email or not - OR better yet change the email message based on if it is changed by the associate or someone in Payroll.)

Thanks Shane! That is a good suggestion. Indeed, through processflow will simplfy the problem. I look at the table, there is a date-stamp. So, it is easy to implement. W4 changes the table directly, so we can't tell what was changed, we can only tell when it is changed. This is the limitation no matter what.

wintergreen,
If you would like to trap the field changed and the old value vs the new value and generate notifications; I would recommend using Smart Notifications instead. Since this is the core functionality of the tool; to measure change ('delta').

- KK

KK, thank you for the great idea. I don't know how to use smart notification. I will look into it. Thanks a lot!

You are very welcome wintergreen. Feel free to send me a message if you'd like me to assist with you with this.

Wintergreen,
I am guessing you don't have smart notifications. It is an additional module so if you are not using it I bet you do not have it. I don't have it so I often do things with Process Flow that others might use Smart Notifications for.

Shane steps on his soap box:
Seems strange to me that Lawson created two applications instead of enhancing the Process Flow tool to do what Smart Notifications does. Lawson never seems to enhance products significantly - they release something new and then sell it to us.
Shane steps off his soap box.

There is one more way I can suggest that can save lot of maintenance. If it is just an email notification, you can design the flow and trigger the same through middle user exit on PR13. This will reduce lot of maintenance, when compared to changing HTM scripts. Does any body see any flaw in this?.. I tried and it seems to work.

The only problem with using the Middle user exit is that if for some reason the update does not occur, you will still trigger the notification. You should use the End user exit and check for errors in theory, the problem being that forms with detail lines have the line function code cleared before the End user exit is called.