Rules & Alerts is an intelligence notification system that enables non-profits to advance the way care is delivered. Users can configure business logic to generate notifications when key events occur so that caseworkers can focus on the most critical tasks and use data to fight participant disengagement.

In this release, Administrators can configure multiple rules with one or more conditions for one or more audiences. Conditions, or triggers, are set on record actions and/or field values. The experience is similar to Form Logic. Examples may include:

Rules & Alerts is the first step to a smarter Apricot that helps caseworkers spend most of their day focused on impact; not the administrative details of their work.

I. Configuring Rules & Alerts

II. Rules Management

III. Alerts Management

IV. Unsupported Fields & Conditions

V. Additional Notes

To begin configuring, access Rules & Alerts under the Workflow Station menu in the Administrator tab

To create a rule and accompanying alert, click New Rule in the top right-hand corner.

Rules are configured in three parts: Rule Details, Trigger and Action.

In Rule Details users select Rule Name and Description that are used for tracking purposes on the Manage Rules page. Some helpful hints:

Users will also select the Form to which the Rule applies. To pick the form, open the dropdown and find the form. Tier 1 Forms appear first in the list, and Tier 2s appear after the last Tier 1.

Click Save & Continue to keep inputs and move on to Triggers. Rule Details card will minimize, but key inputs remain visible for easy reference as users continue configuration.

If user navigates away from New Rule, the partially created rule will appear as active on the Manage Rules page.

Trigger

In Trigger, users set the condition(s) that need to be true for the alert to appear. Setting triggers is a similar experience to setting Form Logic conditions and actions.
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First, users are required to select if the alert will be triggered upon creation of new records, updates of record or both.

Next, users have the option of adding more specificity by selecting field level conditions. All the form’s supported fields will appear in the first dropdown. All supported conditions (“comparison unit”) appear in the second dropdown. And the desired field condition output should be added in the third box.

To see a list of unsupported fields and comparison units, please refer to Unsupported Fields section.

Note: If user is working with Matches Any, Matches All as comparison units, separate the desired outputs with a pipe character. Ex. Matches Any: Hufflepuff|Gryffindor|Ravenclaw

To delete a field condition, click the trash icon located on the right side of the field condition the user is working on.

Users can get more granular by selecting additional field level conditions that must be met.

Click Add Field Condition to add another trigger condition.

Note: All field conditions are connected by AND statements. In this case, an alert would only be triggered if a student speaks English, is Female and was born after 1999.

Note: "Within the Last" operators require both a number and time; e.g. 7 days

As before, Trigger inputs remain visible when the section is expanded.

Action

In Action, users set the notification type, audience(s), or “scopes”, of the alert and the text users will see when reading the alert.

Please keep the following in mind when configuring an Action:

Scope(s) can be set by:

1. Selecting a Site

2. Selecting a Program

3. Selecting a Role

4. Naming individual users

Users must have at least View access to the rule's form in their permissions to be selectable here.

5. User type

To add an additional scope, select “Add Additional Action”. This is handy when administrators want the alert text to be different for each audience.

In this example, Hugh needs to welcome and enroll the new participant, but the admin users only need a notification that there is a new participant.

Click “Save & Continue” to finalize rule creation. Once saved, audiences will start receiving alerts. To stop alerts, toggle off the rule from Manage Rules.

From the Manage Rules page, in addition to creating new rules, administrators can search rules, edit previously saved rules, activate or deactivate rules, delete rules, and duplicate rules.

To search rules, enter search criteria in the search box and click enter or wait a moment for the list to refresh.

To deactivate a rule, click the green toggle. Green indicates an active rule. The toggle will then turn gray and alerts will stop generating. Inactive rules do not generate alerts. To reactivate a rule, click the gray toggle.

Note: Alerts are generated in real time, meaning if I deactivate a rule then reactivate, alerts will not fire retroactively for the time the rule was deactivated.

To edit a rule, click the pencil icon. User will be routed to Edit Rule page to make desired edits.

To delete a rule, click the kebab menu and select “Delete”.

To duplicate a rule, click the kebab menu and select "Duplicate".

All alerts will appear in the Notifications dropdown that is located to the left of the User Badge in the Top Nav.

Notifications can exist in multiple states that are indicated differently in the interface.

1. Brand new alerts – alerts that a user has not seen before will have an orange dot next to the Notification Message and appear in an orange shaded row. The bell icon always shows the total of brand-new alerts.

2. Unread, previously seen alerts – alerts that have not been marked as read or cleared but have been previously viewed. Unread, previously seen alerts appear in an orange shaded row. These alerts persist if the user navigates away.

3. Read alerts – If a user selects the radio button on the alert row, the alert becomes un-bolded and loses the orange row highlight. These alerts persist if the user navigates away.

4. Cleared alerts – If a user clicks the “x”, the alert will disappear in the dropdown.

Note:User cannot retrieve cleared alerts.

Users can change the state of multiple alerts by selecting Mark All Read or Clear All. Both those actions effect every alert for that user.

This is table shows the list of unsupported fields and conditions. If a field does not appear on this list, it is supported.

Please note that linking fields in Rules & Alerts are treated like the base field type. For example, Dynamic number will be treated like a numeric field.