Email reminders nudge the authoriser if a stage has been sitting in their queue without a response for too long. They're configured per-stage, so each step in your workflow can have its own reminder schedule and its own email template. That per-stage granularity is the key feature — you can be gentle on the first stage and firm on the final one, or vice versa, all without writing any code.
Turning reminders on for a stage
Open the stage's configuration and set E-mail Reminder to Yes. Two additional fields appear immediately:
- Time Period — how long the system waits before sending the reminder. You enter a number and pick a unit. The supported units are Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, and Years.
- E-mail Template — which template to use. If left blank, ActiveManage auto-composes a generic reminder. That's fine as a starting point but you'll typically want a bespoke template that matches your brand and tone.
Once turned on, the reminder fires once if the configured time period passes without the stage receiving a response.
Note: The time period is measured from when the request arrived at this stage, not from when the form was originally submitted. So a 2-day reminder configured on stage 3 fires 2 days after the request reached stage 3 — regardless of how long it took to get past stages 1 and 2.
Different reminders at different stages
Because reminders are configured per stage, every stage in your workflow can have its own cadence and its own template. Mix-and-match is the norm rather than the exception.
Three example configurations from real UIVs:
Purchase Request — 3 stages, increasing urgency
- Stage 2 — Line Manager Approval: reminder after 2 days, using a friendly template that says "You have a purchase request waiting for your review. Take a look when you get a moment."
- Stage 3 — Finance Review: reminder after 5 days, using a more formal template that mentions the request's age and the requester's contact details.
- Stage 4 — CFO Sign-off: reminder after 1 day, escalation-style — short, direct, with a note that the request has been waiting for executive approval.
Leave Application — single stage, lenient reminder
- Stage 2 — Manager Approval: reminder after 3 days. Many managers approve leave at the weekend so a same-day reminder would fire too soon.
IT Helpdesk Ticket — multi-stage, quick reminders
- Stage 2 — Triage: reminder after 1 hour. Triage is supposed to be fast.
- Stage 3 — Specialist Assignment: reminder after 4 hours.
- Stage 4 — Resolution: reminder after 1 day.
You're free to use the same time period across every stage if that's simpler — there's no rule that they have to differ. Consistency can be its own virtue when the UIV is used by many teams who each have their own expectations.
What happens after the reminder fires
The reminder email sends exactly once when the configured time period is reached. If the authoriser still doesn't act after the reminder, no further reminders go out from this setting — there isn't a built-in "second reminder" mechanism. For harder cut-offs use the companion Stage Timeout feature, which can automatically decline the request or move it to a different stage after its own configured time period.
Tip: Reminders and timeouts work well together. Set the reminder to fire well before the timeout deadline so the authoriser has time to act before the system intervenes. A common pattern: reminder at 50% of the timeout duration. So if the timeout is set to auto-decline after 7 days, set the reminder for 3 days — authorisers get a polite nudge with plenty of time to respond.
Reminder email contents
Reminder templates have access to the same merge tokens as other UIV email templates. Useful tokens include:
##REFNUMBER##— the request's reference number (with prefix).##STAGENAME##— the name of the stage the request is sitting at.##REQUESTURL##— direct link to the request's stage page so the authoriser can act with one click.##AMDATA_fieldname##— any field from the submitted form. Use this to pull in the requester's name, the request summary, the value or amount, the requested date, or anything else that helps the authoriser act without opening the link.
Keep the template short and direct so it reads like a polite nudge, not a chase. A typical reminder is two short paragraphs: "Reminder that request ##REFNUMBER## is waiting at ##STAGENAME##. Please review when you have a moment: ##REQUESTURL##."
Multiple reminders per request lifecycle
Because every stage has its own independent reminder, a single request that travels through several stages can trigger multiple reminders over its lifetime — one per stage that exceeds its individual timeout. The requester might get nothing for the first three days (everyone acted within the reminder window), then a flurry of reminders if the request gets stuck at a later stage.
That's the right behaviour — the reminder is a signal to the authoriser, not the requester. If you want to also notify the requester at certain points, use the Approved/Progress email template at each stage transition or build a custom callback function for more specific notification logic.