Broadcasting & Notification Tool

Center of Excellence

1. Abstract

Board offers the possibility to have a notification system to inform people about different events that are happening in the application, it also offers the possibility to share information with a larger population outside the application.

2. Context

Three different features allow us to spread and share information between Board users and other populations also:

• Send to
• Subscription
• Broadcasting

Let’s see which feature to use for which context.

3. Content

3.1 Send to

The Send To feature allows you to automatically send a Presentation to one or multiple Board users via email. You can create as many recipient lists as you need, each with its configuration and settings.

The Presentation can be sent in one of the following formats:

• PDF
• MS Word
• MS Excel
• MS PowerPoint

There are also settings for frequency and e-mail text.

This feature is used when:

• The need is to send presentations only.
• The need concerns only Board users.
• The list of destination users is known and fixed.
• The content is fixed - the figures in the presentation will be updated.
• The frequency is defined.

An example of usage can be for the monthly closing activity: each month after the data is entered and consolidated in Board, send to a list of people a presentation of the most important KPIs and figures of the month.

Attention points:

• The export is executed according to the printing properties of the screen.
• The presentation is sent to the users with the security of the sender applied.

This feature is available by default in each Board instance with no additional cost to use it.

3.2 Subscription

This feature allows each user to subscribe to a particular screen, and receive the screen in an exportable format via email.

The user can define the frequency of the export.

The screen can be sent in one of the following formats:

• PDF
• MS Word
• MS Excel
• MS PowerPoint

Attention: The export is executed according to the printing properties of the screen.

This feature is used when:

• The perimeter is the single Board user.
• The content is fixed - the figures on the screen will be updated.
• The frequency is defined.

An example of usage can be when the user wishes to receive a set of reports on a certain frequency without accessing the application and include those as part of other documentation.

This feature is available by default in each Board instance with no additional cost to use it.

3.3. Broadcasting

Broadcasting is a very powerful feature that allows to:

• send notifications to Board users, both internal and external. In addition to the internal, the broadcasting feature expands the notification to external users as well.
• send presentation automatically.

It allows sending a full presentation and notification to any defined Board user, applying the security profile of the task creator.

It is possible to choose the format of the attachment (pdf, word, excel, powerpoint) and define the settings for frequency and e-mail text.

It provides more options for the destination list:

• From an Address Book: Board users that have an e-mail address associated with their profile in the Board users list.
• Email list: it is possible to broadcast presentations to a list of e-mail addresses that are manually edited.
• From Layout: the e-mail address list is retrieved from a layout of a specific Board database. In this way, you can condition the list of users or trigger the send action when some event happens.

Note that by leveraging the layout is also possible to filter the Presentation attached. Refer to the ”Generate the presentation for each recipient using the layout row as filter” option.

This feature is used when:

• The need is to send presentations or trigger notifications via email based on a certain event.
• The need concerns not only Board users, but it is also possible to send to people that are not Board users.
• The list of destination users can be dynamic based on a layout.
• The content of the email can be dynamic when used in a procedure action based on the selected perimeter.
• The frequency can be either defined or triggered after an event.

This feature is available as optional (not by default) with additional costs associated.

Note that the cost for the Broadcasting is agreed upon with the customers based on the number of external users to serve - the internal ones are fully covered anyway as long as the Broadcast license is enabled.

Use cases:

• Monthly closing activities: each month, after the data is entered and consolidated, send to a list of people (that are Board or not Board users) a presentation of the most important KPIs and events of the month.
• Workflows: send an email to the approver with the information about the submitted perimeter.

Center of Excellence

Thanks @Abdelhadi Babaali for the insights on this subject!