If you want to notify people about a business event, you should understand the notification methods that an agent can use. The notification that you choose should contain all information relevant to the event and be seen by everyone who must know about the event.
An Event Studio agent can notify people about business events by
delivering an email to your audience
publishing a news item to a folder frequently viewed by your audience
An important part of a notification is its ability to contain dynamic information. This means that source items from a package can be inserted into the message. The values for these items are not retrieved until the agent is run because a notification message about a critical data item always contains the current values.
Both email and news item notifications can contain dynamic information. In an email task, the email can contain dynamic content in the list of recipients, the subject, and the message body. For more information, see Example - Add an Email Task.
The parts of a news item notification that can contain dynamic content are the headline, the screen tip, and the text. For more information, see Example - Add a News Item Task.
Although email and news item notifications can both show content dynamically, only email notifications can change their target dynamically. By inserting email address items in the recipient fields, you can specify that the recipient list change according to the data in the event list.
You can notify people by email using either a report task or an email task. To help you decide which method to use, you should understand how they differ.
You can use either a report task or an email task
to send a single email text message
to attach a single report in the specified output formats
If you attach only one HTML report and leave the body field empty, the report appears in the message body.
to add links to a single report for the specified output formats
For an email task but not a report task, you can also
add dynamic content to the message, which may result in multiple emails
This means that you can insert source items from a package into the message. If you insert an email address item in the recipient fields, you can tailor the recipient list so that it is specific to the data in the message.
send multiple reports in a single email as attachments and/or links
For example, you can attach a report about stock usage and a report on unfulfilled customer orders when a particular stock item falls below a reorder level.
attach the event list
Emailing reports from an Event Studio agent is useful if you want the report to be tailored to a specific event. However, if you want to regularly send a report by email that is not related to an event, you do not need to create an agent. You can send it by email from Cognos Connection. For more information, see the Cognos Connection User Guide.
A news item task publishes a headline to a folder whose contents can be viewed in a Cognos Navigator portlet and in any folder view. When someone clicks on a headline, they can open Cognos 8 content or view a Web page.
When you create an email message, you can drag data items into the message body. These data items act as placeholders. When the agent runs, the placeholders are replaced with actual values from the data source.
If the agent detects several events that satisfy the event condition, the size of the message body in the delivered email can increase. Every line in the message body that contains a data item placeholder is repeated for each event instance that satisfies the task execution rules.
For information about how multiple events affect email messages, see Example - Add an Email Task.
If data items appear only in the message body, a single message is usually sent containing details of all the events detected. However, if the address or subject fields include data items, many emails may be sent.
For some messages, the appropriate recipient depends on the values in the event. For example, a message about a support call from Customer A must be addressed to Customer A's account manager.
If the data source includes an item that represents email addresses, you can drag this item to the recipient fields. The agent uses this data to generate the email address dynamically. If the agent detects several events that satisfy the event condition, it generates one message for each email address. The source items in the message body are grouped by address.
If you include a source item in the subject field, the agent generates one message for each subject. The source items in the message body are grouped by subject.
If you include source items in both the address and subject fields, the messages are grouped by address and subject.