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Stage Email Reminders

Approver reminders e-mail the person a stage is waiting on when they have not acted. They are set per stage, and a stage can carry several, each with its own delay and template, so you can send a gentle nudge first and a firmer one later.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Forms:

  • User Input Views — Manage Stages on the view, then the stage's e-mail reminder setting
  • Process Inspector — the stage's Timing panel, under Reminder e-mails

Architect Panel → Automation:

  • Tasks — the approver reminder task, which must be enabled

How a reminder is decided

  • The clock starts when the request arrives at the stage, not when the form was first submitted. A request that took a week to clear stage 2 gets a fresh clock at stage 3.
  • Each reminder is sent once per request, per stage. Several reminders on one stage are separate entries, each sent once when its own delay has passed.
  • Only waiting requests are chased. A request that has been decided, moved on, or sent back to the requester for information is not reminded.
  • Paused requests are skipped. A request whose time-out has been paused (from Expiring Soon, or by a rollback) is not reminded until the pause ends.
  • A delayed approver e-mail comes first. If the stage holds back its first e-mail, no reminder is sent until that e-mail has actually gone out. The reminder's delay still counts from arrival, so a reminder already due follows the delayed e-mail on the next run.
  • The stage must use Send E-mail. Reminders go to the same recipient, from the same account, as the stage's own e-mail.

Setting up reminders on a stage

  1. Open the stage from Manage Stages and switch its e-mail reminder setting on.
  2. Add a reminder entry. Choose the unit (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years) and the number of units.
  3. Optionally pick an e-mail template. With none, the platform writes the reminder itself.
  4. Add further entries for later reminders, each with a longer delay.
  5. Save, then confirm the approver reminder task is enabled under Automation → Tasks. The Process Inspector names the task and says whether it is switched off.

What the reminder says

The automatically written reminder carries a fresh link to the decision page. If the stage also has a time-out, it tells the approver the date by which they must respond and what will happen then: declined, or moved to a named stage.

In your own template, put ##AMDATA/AUTHURL## where the decision link belongs; without it the approver has nothing to click. Any field on the request can be inserted with ##AMDATA_rowname## (the field's row name), and ##AMDATA/ALL## inserts the request's details as a block.

What goes wrong

  • Nothing is ever sent. The task is switched off, or the setting was switched on and no entry was added. The Process Inspector reports both.
  • A reminder template with no link. The approver is nudged but cannot act from the e-mail. Add ##AMDATA/AUTHURL##.
  • Reminders after a time-out. They cannot happen: a timed-out request is no longer waiting. Set reminders well inside the time-out.
  • Turning on a task in preview mode does not make it safe. A scheduled run always sends. Use the Preview button on the Tasks screen to see what would be sent first.

Worked example

A purchase approval has a Finance Review stage with a seven-day time-out that declines. Finance asks for a polite reminder at two days and a firmer one at five. The architect adds two reminder entries to the stage: two days with a short template, and five days with no template, so the automatic wording, which states the decline date, is used. They preview the reminder task on the Tasks screen, see two requests that would be reminded, enable the task, and check the Process Inspector no longer reports it as switched off.

Recommendations

  • Remind at about half the time-out, so the approver has time to act.
  • Use two entries, not one long delay, where approvers are often away.
  • Always include the decision link in a custom reminder template.
  • Preview before enabling the task on a live system.