How Email Notifications Work

Overview

For many organizations, it's often imperative to send out immediate notifications for assignments due. Certain time-sensitive issues can not wait until the next day, especially for organizations that conduct business globally.

When the instant notification toggle is on, ZenGRC can instantly notify users when they need to take action on assignable items. This also enables emails to be sent when information is added to the Comments tab on assessments, requests and tasks. This is separate from the daily emails that provide a summary of a user's assigned items.

When integrations, such as Slack, are configured with ZenGRC, the notifications follow the same workflow as detailed here. However, the notifications can be changed within the integrated application (i.e. Slack) if necessary.

Understanding the Workflow

Assignable items in ZenGRC include requests, tasks and assessments. As these items progress through different statuses, the users next in line are immediately informed when action is required.

The following outlines the workflow for different use cases:

• If there are multiple users in the Assignee field (or in the Assessor field in assessments), only one person needs to complete the work to move the item to the next status. Other assignees are notified that the action is complete so they do not replicate the work.
• If there are reviewers, they are all notified that the item needs reviewing.
• Once all reviewers set the item status to Reviewed, the verifiers are notified.
• Reviewers and verfiers are not mandatory. If there are verifiers but no reviewers, the users in the Verifier field are notified when an assignee completes the work.
• When an additional reviewer is added to an item after other reviewers have approved it, the item's status is transitioned back to Submitted and the newly added reviewer is notified. Reviewers who have already approved the work are not notified.
• When a reviewer or verfier declines work submitted, the item transitions back to Open and all assignees are notified.
• If there are multiple users in the Verfier field, only one is needed to complete the item. When this occurs, the other verifiers are informed that no action is required. 

What Doesn't Trigger Instant Notifications?

• Any recurrence that generates items in an Open status.
• Any object created in an Open status during import.
• Assessment generation process does not trigger sending of instant notifications.
• In case there are no reviewers or verifiers, no notification will be sent once the assignee/assessor submits the task.