There are plenty of notification and alert options in OpenAir with most having either standard wording (timesheet awaiting approval, for example) or the ability to setup specific email body content (late timesheet alert, for example). For many the standard wording or text entry capabilities are sufficient to communicate basic information but you may be finding a need to increase the content or make the emails a more effective communication methods by passing along key information for recipients. OpenAir supports content change primarily through the feature known as email templates. If you haven’t looked at these before, they provide a customization method to build out the structure for many of the standard notifications. A great example is customizing a booking notification email to have not only the project information, but any custom fields you’ve added to the booking and perhaps even requester information.

Here’s how – access the Administration -> Global Settings -> Email Templates link (or Account -> Company -> Email Templates).
Select New…Booking email template.

The Booking email template form will appear.
The Template type dropdown will identify the type of email you are creating (new booking(user notification), as an example). Give the template a name then complete the Email subject and Email body. In the Email body, you can insert OpenAir fields that OpenAIr will substitute with values. To insert these fields, you select the field from the ‘field’ dropdown below the email body and the text to insert will appear in the blank text field just below the dropdown. Copy this text value and insert it into the email body, including any %% characters so OpenAir knows it is a field that needs to be populated.

There are a lot of email templates options so feel free to explore. NOTE: in order for an email template to be used, the feature which generates the notification must be activated (new booking notification to users is a setting in the Resources module settings).

Ever wish you had a copy of the automated OpenAir emails sent from you?

Your OpenAir system has most likely been configured with various alerts, notifications, and automated email messages that are triggered based on certain events or lack of events in the system.  Many of those notifications may be coming from you via OpenAir!  You may find people replying to those emails to provide explanations, ask for more information, or simply to send you an ‘ok’ reply back.  Ever wonder how you can get a copy of those emails in your own inbox for reference?  Under the Personal Settings options there is an ability to BCC yourself on all emails.  This will provide a copy of the email from OpenAir to yourself whenever your account is triggering the email.  This is very helpful for items such as resource bookings or client invoices.

To activate this option, navigate to your personal settings (Account -> My Options -> Personal Settings or Home -> Personal Settings or Dashboard -> Personal Settings, depending on your UI) and scroll to the bottom of the page to find the checkbox for ‘Bcc me on all emails’.

You can turn this option off and on as much as you like!   The Bcc applies to all emails you sent and there currently is no filtering option on which emails to receive a Bcc.  This is when inbox rules for your email system will be useful!