Notification rules improvement

Hello everyone !
I was testing the notification rules few days ago, and I had a few questions or improvement ideas :slight_smile:

  • The message always looks like this :

Hi, {User name}
Rule {Rule name} has been triggered. {Rule message}
Thanks for using our site!
The SeaTable team

I thought that it might be interesting to allow people to customize this message by typing the default message (useful for other languages than English) or, even better, by allowing them to use table data like in the formulas with the {Column Names}, to add event name, place, or whatever in the notification…

  • It could also be valuable to give the ability to add directly email addresses instead of users to receive the notifications

  • Finally, I thought that it could be great to add more rule types, for example :

  1. N days before record like a calendar memo (the Records near deadline you implemented almost works like this, except that a memo should only be triggered the first time when Today-record<=N, whereas Records near deadline seems to trigger every day)

  2. A What’s up next month ? rule type, that could be checked once a month and list every records that will happen between now and the next check

  3. Even more powerful : the ability to use a formula to define rule condition and/or rule check frequency

In short, if you get bored, let me know, I’m sure I can find new features :joy: :joy: :joy:
Thanks again for this great tool anyway !!

Benjamin

Hello Benjamin,

thanks for your feature request and glad to hear that you are enjoying SeaTable.

I am totally on your side! The notification function is still being improved in each release, therefore suggestions are super welcome. I’m forwarding all your requests to our developers (Although some of them are already visiting this forum, too).

I think your idea to customize the notification message with placeholders is a great idea. The current notification message seems a little thin, I agree. With customizable fields, the notification can be more powerful indeed. For the moment, it’s only possible to send a personal message together with the fixed notification, which you can fill in in the “Custom message” field.

As for giving the possibility to enter email addresses besides user names as recipients of notifications, it’s a process which involves permission control. Because entering an email address which has no access to the current table would be meaningless. Should anyone who has an external link (if the table has been shared with such) be informed according to a notification rule? This would involve another round of discussion on user permissions. But anyway, this discussion brings us all forward!

And finally the rule types you suggested: Records near deadline is triggered everyday. Maybe some people would like to be informed everyday; but sure, there should be an option to choose if it should inform you everyday, or just once. And as for the What’s up next month? functionality, as well as for the formula rule, currently it could be done with formula (and perhaps also with scripts), where you can set up a date or formula column just for this notification, and when this column triggers a rule, you’ll get the notification. SeaTable is highly customizable and to some extent also programmable, but I agree with you: there should be more ready-to-use functionalities!

Once again, I find your suggestions exciting and constructive, and I wish SeaTable can provide you and all the other users with more features in the near future. Thanks again!

Best,
Meng

Hi Meng,
Thank you for your answer : to tell the truth I had not even thought of creating a column with a special formula but you are right, this can be a good solution.

Placeholders are a great idea : I think they can be quite general (like date, etc.) but fields linked to table columns can really take the feature to another level !!

About the user permission, I also understand your point of view. On the other side, here is mine : as I told you in another post, I’d like to manage the volunteering hours of several families and more generally the functioning of our organization. We are indeed running a parent-managed school : there is a professional teaching team that takes care of the teaching but all of the site management (maintenance work, upkeep of the premises, cleaning, etc.) is managed by the parents (just to set the context).

I am looking for a while a tool like yours allowing us (actually me alone!! :joy: ) to gather the volunteering hours of each famitily in one single place from family-managed inputs, but I have to deal with huge gaps between families in IT ease-of-use.
This is why I had thought of retrieving all the information (email address, volunteer hours, etc.) from a few forms completed by each family, but without necessarily asking each family to create an account because I don’t want them to be lost or frightened (and of course I don’t want them to fiddle and destroy my tables !!).

That’s why I was thinking of using directly there email addresses to send them notifications. In this case, of course, they allowed me to do that because they gave me directly their email addresses, but I can completely understand that it’s not something you can easily verify inside SeaTable…

By the way, is it possible to share a single view of a table (or a single statistics chart or table) with a user ? As my volunteering hours table contains records from every family, I created one view for each family filtering the family name, and I’d like to share this data with them (I don’t want every family to access the whole data but only theirs)

Thanks again for your help and your wise answers :man_student:t2: !
Bests,
Benjamin

Yes, it is possible! Seafile offers a “share view” feature (see below and here more on the feature). If you do not find the “share view” option in your bases, here comes the bitter pill: “Share view” is a feature limited to the Enterprise plan.

In one of the future version, you will also be able to create an external link for a single view (as opposed the entire base with all its data.)

Hi Benjamin,

indeed, the Share view feature is only available in the Enterprise plan.

But for the reporting part, if you want every family to report their working hours without having to create an account and logging in, you can use the form function of SeaTable. Click on the Form button on the top right corner, and you can create, edit and share your form with a QR code, or a URL with all the families. With this QR code or URL, they can open an online form, where they just fill in the blanks and submit their answers. Their answers will be automatically added to your table as a new record. Filling the web form doesn’t require login (if you set so in the form settings).

I would suggest you to fix the online form, print out the sharing QR code and give it to the families, so that they could stick the QR code somewhere, for example besides the kitchen table or on the fridge, so when they want to report their working hours, they can just scan the QR code with their phone and fill in the form.

Hope this helps a little!

Hello,
Thanks to both of you.
Meng, you’re right, I intend to use forms to avoid all the families to create an account.
rdb, thanks for the information, it’s great that you thought of this feature, unfortunately as a tiny NGO we simply can’t afford an Entreprise plan…
Bests,
Benjamin

will the users receive the notifications by email? I tried the notification rule and the notification can only be shown at the notification side. Is there a setup to get email notification?

Hi Elvis, normally the notification rules will trigger a notification both per email and in the base editor (the bell symbol).

If you haven’t received any notification per email: perhaps the Email Notification of Table Changes settings in your Personal Settings has been set to “Don’t send emails”? It’s the default setting, so if you haven’t ever changed this setting, you won’t get such notifications per email.

If it is the case:

  1. Go to your base library and click on your avatar in the top right corner;
  2. Select “Settings”
  3. Under “Email Notification” you’ll find the setting options.

Hope this works!

Thanks for your reply! Is it only available to the enterprise version? my personal setting looks like this:

image

At the log file, I noticed the message:
Can not start instant notice sender: it is not enabled!
how can I enable this?

Now I realize you are using the self hosted version, not the cloud version. So the settings are different. Sorry!
@daniel.pan could you help us here? Is there a quick way to set the local version to send notification emails?

Please check this document: https://docs.seatable.io/published/seatable-manual/config/dtable-events-conf.md

“Notification rules scanner configuration” section

Thanks Daniel!

I tried the setup according to the doc you pasted, I still can’t receive email notification. I noticed two issues:

  1. scan interval does not apply to email sender? I set the interval to 60 seconds, however the log file still show 1800 seconds for email notification:

[2020-10-28 23:28:15.494612] Finish sending user email notices.
[2020-10-28 23:58:15.481325] Start sending user email notices…
[2020-10-28 23:58:15.490797] Last check time is 2020-10-28 23:28:15.478822, update to 2020-10-28 23:58:15.481344

  1. The time in the log (logs/email_notices_sender.log) seems different to the timezone I setup. Which container shall I change for local timezone?

We are talking about two things:

  1. Notification rules: You can setup a notification rule and see if you can receive any notice in the web interface.
  2. Email sending: Once you have notice in the web interface, you can check whether the notice can also be sent via email a few minutes later.
  1. Notification rules are working well. I can receive notice almost instantly at web interface.
  2. No email notification triggered by the rules. New user notification other email notification is working well. And I’ve enable the email notification
[EMAIL SENDER]
enabled = true

per https://docs.seatable.io/published/seatable-manual/config/dtable-events-conf.md

What logs do you have in your email_notices_sender.log?

The scan interval does not apply to email sender.

[2020-10-29 03:28:15.536195] Start sending user email notices…
[2020-10-29 03:28:15.544283] Last check time is 2020-10-29 02:58:15.523363, update to 2020-10-29 03:28:15.536215
[2020-10-29 03:28:15.545761] Found 0 notices
[2020-10-29 03:28:15.550015] DTable last check time is 2020-10-29 02:58:15.533738, update to 2020-10-29 03:28:15.545776
[2020-10-29 03:28:15.550798] Found 0 dtable notices
[2020-10-29 03:28:15.550812] Finish sending user email notices.

[2020-10-29 03:58:15.534268] Start sending user email notices…
[2020-10-29 03:58:15.543737] Last check time is 2020-10-29 03:28:15.536215, update to 2020-10-29 03:58:15.534286
[2020-10-29 03:58:15.545347] Found 0 notices
[2020-10-29 03:58:15.550216] DTable last check time is 2020-10-29 03:28:15.545776, update to 2020-10-29 03:58:15.545361
[2020-10-29 03:58:15.551066] Found 0 dtable notices
[2020-10-29 03:58:15.551082] Finish sending user email notices.

If you already read the notice in the web interface, it will not be sent to your email.

I see!! Thank you for your clarification!