What is uniqueness criteria?
Uniqueness criteria is a set of predefined conditions that determine when an email notification should be sent. Uniqueness criteria ensures that an email notification for a specific data condition is sent only once to the intended recipients, preventing duplicate notifications.
How Uniqueness Criteria Work
- Setting Conditions: When creating email definitions, you define the uniqueness criteria based on a combination of fields and conditions. These criteria are used to ascertain whether a particular data event has already triggered an email notification.
- Avoiding Repetition: The system tracks if an email has already been sent for a specific data condition. If the condition is met again (e.g., the same employee record is updated), but the uniqueness criteria have been satisfied before, the system will not resend the email.
- Selection Process: In the email definition process, you choose the criteria from options like "Send this email once for every [record] that satisfies the filters."
Application Examples
- Employee Records: If you set a uniqueness criterion for an employment email, the system will send the email once for each employee record. If you run the email definition again without new records, it will recognize that emails have already been sent for those employees and will not resend them.
- Stack Data: When applied to stack data fields like qualifications, the email is sent once per row in the stack that meets the filter conditions. If an email has already been generated for a specific row (e.g., a qualification expiry date), it won't be sent again for that row.
- Multiple Definitions: You can create several email definitions with the same uniqueness criteria but for different recipients. This allows you to send different emails for the same event to various departments (e.g., IT and HR) without duplication.
Uniqueness Criteria and Amendments
- Modifications: If you change the uniqueness criterion in an existing email definition, the system warns you about deleting previous uniqueness data. This is because the system keeps an archive of records or stack rows for which an email has been generated.
- Options: You can choose to delete the email's data archive (click 'Yes') to recreate emails for all relevant records or stack data, or keep the archive (click 'No') to maintain the existing record of sent notifications.
Run History and Checking
- Run History: To view when emails were sent, you can open the 'Run History for...' window from the Email Definitions window.
- Pre-Run Check: Before generating a notification, you can check the history to see when and if the email was previously generated and sent.
