Legacy notifications

Disclaimer: This article outlines how to use the legacy notification service. If your platform has been migrated to the new notification service, you should instead consult the article Configuring notifications. 
→ For information about the rollout schedule see the community post: New notification service rollout: Gradual release plan | Community.

Introduction

The Notifications app allows you to create and send event-specific, dynamic-content notifications to targeted user audiences through email, the Notifications area in the platform, or via Docebo's integration with Slack.

Activating the Notifications app

Activate the Notifications app as described in the Managing apps & features article of the knowledge base. The app is listed in the Docebo additional features tab.

The Notifications main page

Once you have activated the app, access the Navigation menu > Configuration (spanner icon) > Automation > Notifications. You will land on the Notifications management page, where you can create new notifications and manage the existing ones.

You can search for notifications from the search bar, or filter them by event using the filter by event dropdown.

List of notification details

Notifications are automatically sent based on an event taking place in the platform and the event's associated conditions. Each notification is tied to an event, and each event is tied to a schedule, an audience, and a recipient type.

Please visit the Notification events and conditions article for detailed information. 

Configure a notification

This chapter covers the steps for configuring a notification. The overview of the steps is as follows. Note that, depending on the chosen notification event, some of these steps may be omitted:

1. Set the notification event
2. Compose the message
3. Schedule the notification
4. Filter which branches or groups trigger the notification
5. Set the recipient role
6. Filter by courses or learning/plans
7. Save or Save and Activate the notification

1. Set the notification event

The first step in configuring a notification is to select what platform event will trigger the notification.  Refer to the article Notification events and conditions for details about each platform event that can be configured. 

1. Select Navigation menu > Configuration (spanner icon) > Automation > Notifications and click New notification.
   → The New notification window will open
2. In the General settings tab, from the Choose the event list, select the event that will trigger the notification. 
   • For example, you might want to send learners a notification when they complete a course. In this case the event would be Learner has completed a course. 
3. In the Code field, you can optionally enter an alphanumeric label to help you more easily identify this notification in the list.
4. Next, select one or more delivery methods for the notification: 
   • Email: requires the configuration of an email sender domain.
   • Notifications: in-platform notification, visible in the header bar (bell icon). 
   • Slack: available only when you have integrated your platform with Slack.

2. Compose the message

→ this is a step in the workflow to configure a notification

Now for each of your selected delivery methods, select the corresponding tab to compose the content of the message

Email notification

For an email notification: Select the email tab. You will need to provide a sender name and email address in the From fields. 

Please note: The email address you use for the sender, eg noreply@mydomain.com must be fully configured in accordance with configuring email sender domains. Failure to do so may result in delivery issues or your email being flagged as spam.
Then continue as instructed in enter the message text  

Slack notification

For a slack notification: Select the slack tab. You can choose whether to send the notification as a direct message to an individual, or to a Slack channel.
- If the notification is sent as a direct message, the user will receive the message from Slackbot (link opens in a new tab). 

- If the notification is sent to a Slack channel, choose the channel from the dropdown menu that appears below the flagged option. You can only send notifications to public Slack channels (link opens in a new tab)
Then continue as instructed in enter the message text  

In-platform notification

• For an in-platform notification: select the Notification tab, then continue as instructed in enter the message text 

Enter the message text

In the tab corresponding to the enabled delivery method (Email, Notifications or Slack) you will find a Subject and Description field in which you can compose your notification message, in one or more languages.

Languages: 

First of all, from the Languages list select the default language of your platform. Note that you cannot start writing any text until you select a language. You must always configure the Subject and Description text of your notification at least in the default language to be able to save it.   

• Once you have done that, if required you can select a different language and enter the Subject and Description in that language as well. 

→ Notifications composed in multiple languages will be delivered to recipients based on their individual language preferences.

Subject and description:

After selecting a language, fill in the Subject and Description with the text of the notification you want to send in the selected language.  

→ For some notification events, you may find these fields prefilled with a template text that you can customize.

You can incorporate into your message the shortcodes listed at the bottom of the page. 

• These are tags such as [course_name] or [first_name] that will be replaced with the relevant data–from the notification event and recipient–when the notification is sent out. 
• The available shortcodes depend on the chosen notification event, and you can only use the ones that are listed.

For more information see the chapter Notes on shortcodes.

The text in the message Description can also be formatted:
- Using the toolbar buttons for in-platform and email notifications. 
- For slack notifications there is no toolbar, but you can use markdown (opens in a new tab) to format the text.

—> When you have composed the notification message for all languages and for all the delivery methods, click Next to advance to the next step.

3. Schedule the notification

→ this is a step in the workflow to configure a notification

In the Schedule notification step you can configure when this notification will be sent to recipients. Depending on the notification event you have set, one or more of the following options may be available: At the time of the event, Before the event, After the event, and Manually.

Note: For digest notifications the options are different, please see the chapter Digest notifications.

At the time of the event

The notification will be sent to recipients as soon as the triggering action has been completed in the platform.

After the event

The notification will be sent to recipients a certain amount of time after the event or action is completed,  e.g. after a learner has completed a course. 

You can set how many hours, days or weeks after the event the notification will be sent. If you set days or weeks you can also set the time of day (full hours only) when you want it to be sent. 

Note that, for days after the event, the delay is computed as follows:

• Move forward the specified number of days (24-hour periods) from the date and time of the event.
• Then send the notification out at the first next occurrence of the scheduled time you set in the HH field. 

This means that, in some cases the notification may be sent out one day later than you expect. For example, suppose an event occurs on 6 June at 3pm and you configure a notification for 4 days after the event at 10am:
- 4 days after the event is 10 June at 3pm
- but the next occurrence of the scheduled time is 11 June at 10am, and this is when the notification is sent. 

A similar logic holds for weeks after the event. 

By contrast if you use the hours option the notification will be delayed for the exact number of hours that you specify from the event. 

→ An exception to the logic described in this section is the Learner has yet to complete a course notification, which computes the delay based on “human days”. So from the date of the event it moves forward the specified number of days, and on that day sends out the notification at the scheduled time. 

Before the event

The notification will be sent to recipients a certain amount of time before the event, e.g. before a webinar or ILT session begins. 

You can set how many hours, days or weeks in advance the notification will be sent. If you set days or weeks you can also schedule the time of day (full hours only) when you want it to be sent.

Hours before the event

Note that only the hour (and not the minutes) of the event time are taken into account. For example, suppose an ILT session is due to begin at 10:30am:

• If you set the notification for one hour before the event, it will be sent at 9am (and not at 9:30am)
• Pay attention to this effect also when you create a session starting soon. For example, if at 9:05 am you create the above ILT session starting at 10:30 am, the notification set for one hour in advance will not be sent. 

Days before the event

For days before the event, every day at the scheduled hour the system will check for events within the specified time span, and send out the notifications.  For example, suppose an event is due to start on 6 June at 3pm and you configure a notification for 1 day before the event, to be sent at 10am:

• On 5 June at 10am the notification engine checks for events in the time window between 6 June at 10am and 7 June at 10am. → it finds the 6 June 3pm event and sends out the notification for it. 

Note that the time window is inclusive of its endpoints. This means that in some cases the notification may be sent out one day sooner than expected. For example, for the same event due to start on 6 June at 3pm, if you configure the notification for 1 day before the event, to be sent at 3pm (same hour as the event):

• On 4 June at 3pm the notification engine checks for events in the time window between 5 June at 3pm and 6 June at 3pm. → It already finds the 6 June 3pm event and sends out the notification for it.
• If the event had instead been due to start at 3:15pm, the 3pm notification would have gone out on 5 June, as expected, without an “extra” day in advance.   

Manually

Some notifications can also be sent manually in addition to being scheduled. For these notifications, you will see a play icon next to the activation checkmark. To send the notification, click on the play icon. In the pop-up, flag the checkbox and click on the Trigger button.

Notes about scheduling notifications

Tip: Notifications base their scheduling on the time zone of the user who is creating or editing the notification. Whenever a notification is updated, its time zone will be set to that configured for the user who is saving the notification

• It is not possible to resend notifications.
• Scheduled notifications are sent periodically and are not triggered at the time of the event. These notifications leverage a job that is executed on a scheduled basis (the frequency is dependent on the notification’s configuration).
• For extended enterprise platforms, Superadmins should note that the scheduled job is created at the moment of notification creation using the base domain that the Superadmin is currently logged into. All future notifications will be delivered using this domain as the base URL.
• If you are creating a scheduled notification and your platform's timezone settings are set to a timezone that is offset by 30 or 45 minutes from UTC, the notification will be sent at the top of the hour an hour early. To schedule the notification properly, set the time forward by one hour. For example, if you wish to receive your notification at 9:00, schedule it for 10:00. The following timezones are affected:
  • India Standard Time (IST): UTC +5:30
  • Australian Central Standard Time (ACST): UTC +9:30
  • Australian Central Western Standard Time (ACWST): UTC +8:45
  • Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT): UTC +10:30
  • Lord Howe Standard Time (LHST): UTC +10:30
  • Lord Howe Daylight Time (LHDT): UTC +11:30
  • Cocos Islands Time (CCT): UTC +6:30
  • Chatham Island Standard Time (CHAST): UTC +12:45
  • Chatham Island Daylight Time (CHADT): UTC +13:45
  • Afghanistan Time (AFT): UTC +4:30
  • Iran Standard Time (IRST): UTC +3:30
  • Iran Daylight Time (IRDT): UTC +4:30
  • Myanmar Time (MMT): UTC +6:30
  • Nepal Time (NPT): UTC +5:45
  • Newfoundland Standard Time (NST): UTC -3:30
  • Newfoundland Daylight Time (NDT): UTC -2:30
  • Marquesas Time (MART): UTC -9:30

→ When you have finished,  click Next to advance to the next step.

4. Filter which branches or groups trigger the notification  

→ this is a step in the workflow to configure a notification

In the step Apply this notification to all branches or select custom branches and/or groups you can set whether the notification will go out for all occurrences of the chosen event, or only when that event affects or involves a particular set of users.
→ For example, you might want to send a Learner has completed a course notification only when learners of a specific branch complete a course. 

Set All branches and groups if you do not want to apply any filters. The notification will go out whenever the event occurs, irrespective of which user initiated or was affected by the event. 

Set Select branches and/or groups option if you do want to apply some filters:

•  You can then select the check boxes alongside the groups and/or branches that you want to include. 
• In the case of branches, you can select whether to include or exclude sub-branches of a branch. 
• If you set a combination of groups and branches, the notification will be triggered for any user that belongs to at least one of the selected groups or branches. 

Your selection in this configuration step will be displayed in the main Notifications table under the Filter column.

Please note: If you set Select branches and/or groups but then do not select any branches or groups (all check boxes are clear), the effect will be the same as selecting All branches and groups.  

→ When you have finished,  click Next to advance to the next step.

5. Set the recipient role

→ this is a step in the workflow to configure a notification

In the step Select target role for your notification you define who will receive the notification, based on their user role. 

The available roles depend on the selected notification event. The selected role defines who will receive the notification, based on their relationship to the user who initiated or was involved in the event.

→ For example, for a Learner has completed a course notification, if you select Users the recipients will be the users who complete a course. But if you select Instructors the recipients will be the instructors of users who complete a course. 

Remember that you can select only one target recipient role per notification: if you need to send the same notification to Power Users and to Superadmins, you have to compose two notifications, one for each recipient type. When doing so, remember that roles may overlap with levels, so if you set up a notification for users and a notification for instructors, some instructors may receive both notifications, since they have been assigned to one or more courses as instructors, but their user level in the platform may be user.

Please note! For ILT courses, Instructors are assigned to the course and not enrolled. 

Therefore, if you have set up the notification "ILT session starting" and included Instructors as a target of the notification, the notification will NOT be sent to Session Instructors unless they are also enrolled in the course/session as learners.

When configuring the notification’s recipients, remember that every notification behaves according to its own logic and may be subject to specific rules. Check Notification events and conditions for more information.

Your selection in this configuration step will be displayed in the Notifications main table under the Roles column.

→ When you have finished,  click Next to advance to the next step.

6. Filter which courses and/or learning plans trigger the notification

→ This is a step in the workflow to configure a notification . You will see this step only for notification events related to courses and learning plans.

In the step Apply this notification to all courses or choose specific courses/learning plans, you can restrict the notification to a subset of the learning content. 

If you do not want to filter by courses or learning plans, select All courses and All learning plans. 

Otherwise you can do one or both of the following: 

• In the Courses tab, enable the Select courses option and then select one or more courses. 
• Similarly in the Learning plans tab, enable the Select learning plans option and then select one or more learning plans.

The notification will be sent out if the event matches at least one of the courses or learning plans that you set. (And also matches any groups/branches filters that you set) 

Please note: If you set Select courses but then do not select any courses(all check boxes are clear), the effect will be the same as selecting All courses.  And similarly for Learning plans.

→ When you have finished,  click Next to advance to the next step.

7. Save or Save and Activate the notification

→ This is a step in the workflow to configure a notification. 

When you reach the final step of the configuration, you can click Save to just save your notification, or Save and Activate if you want to already activate it. 

The notification will only start to work when it is activated, and you can also activate it later from the main notifications list.

Managing notifications

All the notifications created in your platform are listed in the Notifications area of the Navigation menu > Configuration (spanner icon) > Automation > Notifications. Find the notification in the list, and click on the item in the Scheduled column to edit the notification schedule, or on the Filter, Roles, or Associated courses columns to edit the corresponding details.

At the end of the notification's row, use the checkmark to activate or deactivate the notification. Use the pen and paper icon to edit the details of the notification and the red X to delete it. Before editing a notification, make sure that the notification is not running. We strongly discourage you from editing the notification event type, since this change may have an impact on the users involved in the notification. If you need to change the notification event type, create a new notification instead. 

Notes about managing notifications

• If a Power User profile has permissions to manage notifications, the Power Users assigned to that profile will see the existing notifications set specifically for the branches or the courses that they manage. If the notification is within the Power Users visibility, then they can see the notification; if the notification has a wider set of courses or branches not in the Power Users visibility, then they won't see the notification. Please keep this in mind when assigning profile permissions.
• Every notification’s modification will trigger a scheduled job deletion and recreation. 
• Extended Enterprise Superadmins should be careful to edit notifications while logged into the domain they were originally created in as editing a notification previously created on a different domain will change the base url used in short-codes substitutions.

Digest notifications

Digest notifications group multiple notifications about the same type of event into one larger notification. For example, instead of receiving seven separate notifications about courses that are not yet completed, the user will receive one notification with a list of the courses that they have yet to complete.

The available digest notifications are listed in the  Notification events and conditions article.

Digest notifications are configured similarly to other notifications. When you compose the message body, the shortcode for items being listed in the digest must be placed between [items] and [/items] tags. For example, for the Digest: User has yet to complete a course: 

Please note: The courses in the digest will be listed in order of course creation.  

Manually and Every options

When you schedule the notification sending, depending on the type of digest, the available options may be Every and/or Manually.

With the Manually option, the digest notification can be sent out manually, and will not be scheduled automatically.

In the case of Every you can set an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly frequency for when the digest is sent out.  

Number of days to check in advance

For the Digest: Course has expired notification only, there is a further option, for Number of days to check in advance, that lets you specify which courses to include in the digest based on their upcoming expiration dates. 
Please note that the frequency for sending the digest is still that set in the Properties tab, with the Every option

• For example if you set a digest with 4 days in advance, the digest will include all the courses that are set to expire within the next 4 days.
• The Send only on exact day option controls whether an expiring course is included in the digest only when it is 4 days from its expiration, or also when it is 3 days, 2 days, and 1 day from expiration. 

For more information Check out the Docebo Community guide on digest notifications (opens in a new tab).

Docebo Learning Impact notifications

If you are using Docebo Learning Impact to measure the learning impact of your courses, you can take advantage of in-platform notifications. On top of the email notifications, initial learning impact questionnaires can be accessed through in-platform notifications increasing contact points with the learner and improving your response rates. 

In-platform notifications are disabled by default. To enable them, access the Navigation menu > Configuration (spanner icon) > Platform setup and tools > Advanced settings and find the Learning Impact tab. From this page, you can enable or disable in-platform notifications for Learning Impact for those courses where it has been enabled. 

Learn more about Docebo Learning Impact notifications. 

Notification priorities

All notifications have an assigned priority that can be either normal priority or high priority. Normal priority notifications should be sent within sixty minutes of the event being triggered while high priority notifications are supposed to be sent within ten minutes of the triggering event.

A notification is considered sent once it has been dispatched from the Docebo SMTP server, actual delivery times may vary depending on external network traffic, the receiving SMTP server and the correct configuration of the recipient’s MX, SPF and DKIM records in DNS. These systems are outside of Docebo’s control and may delay or hinder the correct delivery of the notifications.

All notifications listed in the Notification events and conditions section show the priority they have been assigned.

Tips for notifications

Here follow some suggestions for the creation of the notification description. These best practices are valid for any type of notification (email, in-platform or Slack).

4-byte Unicode characters

4-byte Unicode characters are not supported by the platform when creating or editing a notification.

Delayed notifications

Most notifications are triggered immediately by the associated activity in the platform. There are, however, a few activities scheduled by the platform background activities that are not instantly triggered in real-time. As an example, the system monitors checklists for updates every three hours. As a result, a checklist notification could be delayed up to three hours based on the timing of the platform background activity. In addition, notifications, webhooks, and some other tasks are handled by an event bus, which is a protocol of creating events that are managed on a first-in-first-out basis. Infrastructure level limitations with the event bus could lead to delays in notifications (commonly, a delay in notifications going out can be caused by infrastructure issues or long queues).

Long notifications

Notifications have a character limit of 65535 characters. Any notification that is generated that exceeds this limitation will not be displayed correctly. Please note that this character limit is a limit of the number of characters received by the notification system. As such, content which is not displayed, such as HTML code and converted shortcodes, are also counted towards this limitation.

Extended enterprise

If you are using the Extended Enterprise app, remember that your audience for notifications can be influenced by the domain in which the person who creates the notification is logged into. For example:

- If a message notification is scheduled, it will be sent out based on the domain the notification itself was created in (e.g. the domain where the administrator actually set up that notification).
- If it’s unscheduled or immediate, it will be based on the domain the notification was triggered in (i.e. where the administrator enrolled a user or where a user enrolled themself).

Resend the welcome notification

If you want to resend the welcome notification, first of all check that you have an active notification configured for the event "User has been created (by administrator)". 

Then select Navigation menu > People (people icon) > Users. On the Users main page, select all the relevant users, click the Choose action button at the bottom of the page and select Send activation notification.

Enrolling users into unpublished courses

When enrolling users into courses that are not yet published, decide on whether to send notifications for those enrollments ahead of time and be sure to turn off any notifications for enrollment prior to enrolling users. Once done with enrollment, you can re-activate the notifications. This can occur when you need to enroll users into unpublished courses to keep an enrollment history.

ICS files

ICS files, opened with Outlook, will open in a new calendar and not in the default calendar.

Notes on shortcodes

Shortcodes and clickable links

Shortcodes referencing links, such [course_link], will not actually create clickable links in the notifications. Rather, they only contain the URL in text format without HTML tags.

If you want to create an active link, you have two options: 

• Use the Insert/edit link toolbar button and paste the shortcode (for example, [course_link]) in the URL field.
• Use the Source code button in the toolbar and directly insert the HTML tag, using the shortcode as the href attribute. For example, <a href="[course_link]">My Course</a>

→ Note for extended enterprise platforms: Refer to Shortcode links and extended enterprise domains to ensure that the domain in the shortcode URL ( https:/www.domain.xxx/path_url_platform ) corresponds to the domain of the recipient user.

Shortcode links to courses or sessions

When using shortcodes involving links to specific courses or sessions, please note that these do not work in the same way as deep links, meaning that the user will receive an error when clicking on the link without being enrolled in the course.

When you include the [course_link] shortcode in notifications, users clicking on the link will land on a different page, depending on their user level and on whether they are logged in to the platform:

• If the user clicking on the link is either Superadmin or a Power User (having full permissions on the linked course):
  - If logged in to the platform, they will land on the course management page.
  - If NOT logged in, they will land on the course page in learner view.
• If the user level is User, they will always land on the course page in learner view, irrespective of whether they are logged in or not.

Shortcodes with dates and times

• When including the [expire_at] shortcode in notifications, remember that the time expressed in the notification received by the user is expressed in the user's timezone.
• [session_dates]:
  When a user enrolls in an ILT course session they are automatically enrolled in all the events of that session. The session dates are the dates on which those session events are scheduled to take place.
  →the [session_dates] shortcode is populated with all the session’s dates, even when some or all of them are in the past.

Shortcodes with login credentials

Some notifications, such as User has been created, can include a [user_password] shortcode. A typical use case is to communicate login instructions to users, ie  the platform link and credentials to be used (username and password).

In the notification, the [user_password] shortcode is always replaced by a “Reset your password” link. Upon clicking this link, the user is prompted to enter their email address, so that they can receive another reset link to finally create their password. 

This two-step workflow enables an administrator to create users (either with or without an initial password, depending on the mechanism used to create them) and then through the notification have the users themselves create or change their passwords.

Shortcode links and extended enterprise domains

For extended enterprise platforms, when using shortcodes such as [course_link] in a notification, you need to ensure that the base URL of the link matches the recipient’s domain. 

→ For example, a user assigned to the “branch1 domain”, who accesses the platform at https:/<branch1_domain>, should receive a course link with that same base URL https:/<branch1_domain>/path_to_course.

The base URL may be the domain in which the notification was triggered or created/updated, depending on how the notification is scheduled:

For notifications sent at the time of the event: 

The base URL for these notifications is the domain in which the event occurs. This means the logged-in domain of the user who performed the action.

→ For example, if an administrator logged into <branch1_domain> enrolls a learner in a course, the User enrolled in a course notification will take the administrator’s domain as its base URL. But if the learner who receives the notification actually belongs to a different domain, the resulting links will not work for them. 

Therefore, be mindful of the domain you are logged into when modifying courses, sessions or users, or taking other actions that will trigger immediate notifications.

Remember, for notifications sent at the time of the event, the domain where the event occurs is the domain that dispatches the notification.

For notifications sent before/after the event:

The base URL for these notifications is the logged-in domain of the administrator who creates or edits the notification. 

→ This is because these notifications leverage a scheduled job, created when the notification is configured, and all ensuing notifications are then sent out with that base URL. 

Therefore, when creating these notifications, make sure that you are logged in to the same domain as the intended recipients. 

Also, be careful to edit notifications while logged into the domain they were originally created in, as editing a notification previously created on a different domain will change the base url used in short-code substitutions.