Understanding and Managing Notifications in ZenQMS
ZenQMS provides robust notification settings to keep users informed about important activities within the system. This article outlines the various notification types, how to manage your personal preferences, and how admins can set default notification behaviors for new and existing users.
General Notification Settings and Delivery
Personal notification settings can be adjusted within your 'Settings >Notifications' section.
Notification Delivery Options:
- Immediately: As soon as an event occurs.
- Hourly: In a summary sent hourly.
- Daily: In a daily summary.
- Weekly: In a weekly summary.
- Never: To disable notifications entirely.
Notification Defaults and Super User Control
The 'Notification Defaults' option allows admins to set the default settings for all users. Admins have the additional capability to configure notification settings for all new and existing users, and to 'lock' these settings. Locking a setting will override any individual user settings for all users. Unlocking a setting will revert back to any previous settings that users had selected.
Note: You cannot set the Daily Summary notification to 'never'. However, if you do not have any training items or signatures that are due, you will not receive a daily summary email.
Module Specific Notifications
This section details the specific notifications you can expect from different modules within ZenQMS.
Signatures
- When/What: You’ll receive a notification any time your signature is required on a document, task, change control, or issue as part of a workflow step.
- How: Notifications appear in your 'Signatures Needed' widget on your main dashboard and can also be sent by email, based on your preferred frequency (immediate, hourly, daily, or weekly).
Details: The notification includes a direct link to the item requiring your signature, making it easy to access and complete the action.
Documents
- When/What: Notifications are triggered when you’re assigned as an author, a workflow step becomes active for you, a document you authored is approved or retired, or you’re assigned to train on a document.
- How: You can adjust these notifications to arrive immediately, hourly, daily, or weekly.
- Details: All document notification emails include direct links to the relevant documents. You’ll also be informed if you need to retrain on a new version of a document.
Tasks
- When/What: You’ll be notified when you’re assigned to a task within a change control, issue, or standalone context.
- How: You must have task notifications enabled in your settings to receive direct email notifications; otherwise, tasks will appear in your Daily Summary if due within the next 30 days.
- Details: Task notifications inform you of your next steps or actions required in workflows.
Change Controls
- When/What: You’ll get notifications for new change controls and stage assignments.
- How: Like other notifications, these can be set to your frequency preference. By default, settings may be set to ‘Never’ until you update your profile, so be sure to configure them if you want alerts.
- Details: Notification emails contain links directly to the referenced Change Control.
Issues
- When/What: You’ll get notifications for new issues and stage assignments.
- How: You can manage notification frequency individually. By default, these are set to ‘Never’ until you change your settings.
- Details: Emails include hyperlinks to the specific issue, and detail the action required.
Daily Summary
- When/What: The Daily Summary is a required system-generated email sent if you have pending signatures, overdue items, or training due within 30 days.
- How: You can choose the delivery time, but you cannot turn this off as long as you have pending items.
- Details: This summary includes alerts for all signatures needed, overdue reviews, overdue or upcoming training, and upcoming or overdue items in documents, change controls, issues, and tasks.