The new UCM Notification Center is a consolidation of previous individual pop-up menus, as well as the introduction of a Milestone menu. All the tabs of the Notification Center will also only show those items that are assigned to you, the logged in User.
The Notification Center will pop-up on login, or can be accessed at any time by clicking the envelope icon located right above the Global Search. Each User can configure the Notification Center to look how they would like by resizing the column headers, resorting & reorganizing the default layout, and optionally removing any unneeded columns.
Note: Currently, you cannot add custom data Fields to the Notification center, however more customization options along those lines, as well as hiding certain tabs all together, will be coming in version 2.0.
Below, we will cover each tab of the Notification Center and the options available to you from them.
Assigned Contracts
The Contracts that appear in this list are all Containers that are in a Workflow Stage that you are currently Assigned to. On this tab, you will be able to see information like Contract Type, the current Stage Name, which Workflow it is in, and How Many Days has it been in its current Stage. Clicking on the Name or ID will take you directly into that Contract Container.
If the Stage you are on is an Approval Stage, then you will be able to Approve, or Reject, as well as leave the required Note right from the page you are on. As soon as you complete an Approval, it will be removed from your list.
Milestones
The Milestones area of the Notification center is a new addition to the notifications you can receive in UCM. In this area, you will be able to see any Milestone that has previously had an email notification sent to you. This are will NOT show you future Milestones that have not yet been sent, for that you would need to use a Milestone View as a custom report.
On the Milestones tab, you will see the Contract ID, but instead of seeing the Contract Name, you have the Milestone Name. This is because the Milestone Name is a combination of the Contract Name and the specific Date Field the Milestone is configured for. Clicking on the Contract ID will take you directly to the Contract, whereas clicking on the Milestone Name will take you into the details for that specific Milestone.
The Snooze/Complete checkbox will allow you to interact with the specific Milestone and complete one of those actions. If you are using the new style of AMR’s, then you will be given the option to either Snooze or Complete the AMR once you check the box, and if you are still using Classic AMR’s, which do not give you the option to Snooze, you will be given the choice to either Complete just the one AMR, or all in that series. If your organization uses Milestone Completion Notes, you will be asked to leave one as normal.
The remaining columns all give you more details about the specific Milestone itself. Milestone Date (A) is the critical date of the Contract, or the date the Milestone is based on and any action items should be completed prior to this date. If the Milestone Date has passed, then the Name and the Date will be highlighted in bold red text (B).
Initial Notice Days and Notify Person On Date (C) are tied to each other, as the Notify Person On Date is calculated by subtracting the Initial Notice Days from the Milestone Date itself. These number should never change unless the Contract or Milestone itself are edited. Reminder Interval Days (D) gives you information about the Rule itself and the way your Admins configured it. If you take no action on Initial Notice Reminders, this is how often the system will continue to send automatic notifications until the Milestone is completed.
The Next Notification Date (E) is calculated usually based on when the next scheduled System Reminder will be sent, however, if any User decides to Snooze the Milestone, then the date selected to receive the Snooze reminder will appear here with an (S) next to it to let you and everyone know it was manually snoozed (F). Any time an AMR is Snoozed, it is added to the Times Snoozed total being counted in that column.
The final column in this area is the Final Notification Sent, which will only be used on new style of Milestones. This box will be checked either once the Final Notification email has been sent (if configured), or once the Milestone Date has passed if no Final Notification was configured earlier. This box being checked will mean a User can NOT snooze an AMR, they can only Complete.
Activities
This area of the Notification Center is fairly straightforward if you have been using the previous Activities pop-up. You have all the same info, like Contract ID & Name, Activity Name, and Start Date, but you now also get the End Date and Assigned Others columns for more information. Any Activities with an End Date that has passed today's current date, will be highlighted in bold red text just like Milestones do.
You can Complete these Activities from this pop-out using the Complete checkbox just like how you had done previously, with the one change being you can no-longer dismiss all Activities in one click. We did this to avoid situations where Users were never getting around to completing their Activities, however, this Notification Center will NOT continue to pop-up the same way that the previous Activities pop-up did, so mass dismissal should not be needed.
You can quickly Complete your Activities though by checking the checkbox and then using the ENTER button on your keyboard to move past the verification message. Using this method, you can make fast work of a large set of Activities you need to complete.
Reviews
Reviews are probably the least used notification in UCM currently, and part of that may be that there is not much detail that can be given on a Review, but there will be some changes coming down the road that will make these a more useful item.
For those of you that currently use Reviews though, this area of the Notification Center should be a big improvement for you. The old Reviews pop-up ONLY had the Contract Name, not even the ID. You now get the Contract ID, as well as the Contract Type, current Stage Name, Workflow, and how may Days it’s been in the current Stage. We included this information since the organizations currently using Reviews the most are using them in connection with their Workflows, but the information available here may change in the future.
Like all the other items we’ve looked at, you can of course complete the Review and lave the required Note right from the pop-out menu.
Messages
The Messages area is a place where UCM Support and your Local Admins can send important updates and critical information to any Users of the System.
More specifics about how to navigate the Messages Center, like accessing older Messages, marking all as Read, or downloading older Attachments can be found HERE.
Recent Contracts
The final tab in the Notification Center is Recent Contracts. This list is pretty self-explanatory, however, it is a change from how Recently Accessed Contracts used to work.
Previously, you could only see Five (5) Recent Contracts at a time, and even if you did have it increased to more you’d only see 5 in the little window as you scrolled. Now, you will always see your Fifty (50) most Recent Contracts, an increase of ten times!. In addition to increasing the amount you can see, you will also be told, down to the minute, the last time you accessed that Contract. Hopefully this will help you navigate between unrelated Contracts much quicker, as well as help you pick back up on unfinished tasks using the Last Accessed information.
There has also been the addition of the Recent Contracts Clock next to the Global Search, which doesn’t give last accessed information, but can make it quickest to navigate than even the Notification Center. For more info click HERE.
