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 those conducting business globally.

For these reasons, ZenGRC has the ability to turn on instant notifications for assignable items in ZenGRC, which include requests, tasks and assessments. No other object triggers notifications.

The Workflow for Comments

For those in the Assignee, Reviewer or Verifier fields, the following occurs when the instant notification toggle is on:

• When information is added to the Comments tab, all assigned users on assessments, requests, and tasks are emailed 
• If those commenting are in one of the assigned fields, they will not receive an email.
• If an assignable item is in a Completed status and a comment is posted, notifications are still sent.
• At this time, we do not support targeting a user with the @ symbol.

The Workflow for Requests, Assessments and Tasks

For those in the Assignee, Reviewer or Verifier fields, the following occurs when the instant notification toggle is on:

• Assigned users next in line to take action on assessments, requests, and tasks are emailed when there are status changes.
• 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?

• Comments made or status changes on any object other than a request, assessment or task.
• 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 when the assignee/assessor submits the task.