Kavi Members email scheduling tools allow organizations to schedule template-based email notifications to be sent out automatically to company representatives, individual members, staff and administrators when important events occur. Some examples include messages sent to moderators to notify them of new membership applications, new member welcome messages with login links and membership renewal reminders.

Figure 23.1. Example email schedule

The schedule is based on events such as companies or user records being added or changed, or events in the membership workflow, such as memberships being added or expiring.

Once the base event has been selected, the email is scheduled in relation to this event, so that the email will be sent before, after or when the event happens. For example, notices are sent to moderators after an application enters the 'Pending Moderation' state of the membership workflow.

The 'When' field displays both the event and the time at which the email will be sent in relation to this event. For example, if the event is 'Company Membership is Expired', the 'When' field for an email scheduled to go out before this event might contain the value '30 Days Before Company Membership is Expired' and the 'When' field for an email scheduled to go out after the membership expires might contain the value '30 Days After Company Membership is Expired'.

Email templates contain messages about an event that are aimed at a certain type of recipient. Variables in the template are replaced by actual text values when the email is sent. For example, the variable '$org_name' represents the name of the organization, and the variable '$c_name' represents the name of the company to which the email is sent. If an organization named 'Standards Organization' sends an email template to two companies that have just been added to the database, 'Company A' and 'Company B', the organization name 'Standards Organization' will be substituted for the variable '$org_name' in both email messages. 'Company A' will be substituted for '$c_name' in the message sent to Company A, and 'Company B' will be substituted for '$c_name' in the message sent to Company B.

To view all available email templates, use the Manage Email Templates tool. To see a preview of the way a template appears when it is actually sent, use the Manage Email Schedule tool, which displays the template with values from the database substituted for variables.

In Kavi Members, scheduled email is driven by events that affect a type of object, including: Company, User, Individual Membership, Company Membership or Company Representative. Each of these objects has its own table (or set of tables) in the Kavi Members database.

It can be difficult to determine which object is affected by an event, but a list is presented on the first step of the Add an Email Template tool. One of the most subtle examples is a notification sent to a company representative that their account is going to be deactivated because their company's membership is expiring. What actually changes in the database in this scenario is the value in the Status column in the user's record (which will be reset to 'inactive') so the correct choice is the User object.

The selection of the correct object is the first step in creating a scheduled email. Once the object is set, it cannot be changed. But if the wrong object is inadvertantly selected, it quickly becomes apparent on the 'When' step as the event that triggers the message doesn't appear in the list of available events. If this happens, the Back button can be used to return to the first step and select an appropriate object. In rare cases where a scheduled email is based on the wrong object, a new scheduled email will have to be created to replace the misconfigured one.

It isn't always immediately obvious how many scheduled email messages may be sent out when an event occurs, especially if the organization has a lot of scheduled email. The Email Schedule may include multiple scheduled messages targeted at different recipients, and scheduled messages may be sent from other applications as well. New company membership are the classic example of this. Different welcome messages are scheduled for the Primary Contact and regular company representatives, and Kavi Billing and Kavi Showcase send messages to the Billing Contact and Showcase Company Admin if these applications are installed.

The example schedules below illuminate some of the ways automated email notifications can be used to keep business processes running smoothly. These are only examples. Automatic email notifications are set up independently for each organization, and may include as many or as few notifications as needed.