How to notify specific group of users when file is Revised

[kwoodley]

My company has the requirement to have Windchill send an email notification to a specific group of uses when a released file is revised. Currently we have promotion management set up to notify a group when the file is promoted to Released. If the file needs to be revised after going to released state, the designers want a specific group of users notified that the revision is changing and the state is changing. Is there a mechanism similar to the promotion management we can use to notify a specific group that a file's state is being changed to due to revision?

[MikeLockwood]

Subscription should work for this.

Select to send the subscription to a Group, not individual users.

[kwoodley]

Can this be set in our product template? Is this something I can assign globally to existing files or will it need to be added to each file individually?

[MikeLockwood]

Subscriptions are made on data objects, and cannot be part of a Product Template.

Note: can set up subscriptions a variety of ways:

A) From one Drawing to one user

B) from one Drawing to a Group of users; add / remove users to the Group as needed and it continues working

C) From a Folder (any Drawings or anything else in the Folder) to a Group

C is by far preferable for efficiency.  Requires that users put the data in the Folder (which may conflict with other uses of Folders).

Note: If user 1 moves on and user 2 needs to be notified, no easy way with approach A to replace who gets notified.

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Another completely different and somewhat more sophisticated approach is to use a Notification Policy rather than Subscription.  Notification Policy is "push" which Subscription is sort of "pull."  Policies are not explicitly listed as being included when you save a Product as a Product Template, but are in fact included in the Template. This might be a better way.

[kwoodley]

Do you know of a way to customize the text that is sent out as the subject and body for the notification policy?

[MikeLockwood]

When you create the subscription or notification policy, you enter any desired text. This can be edited later if desired.

[kwoodley]

I am testing the Notification Rule on the files in a product. When I create a notification rule I have the option to select the object type affected, the event and the participants. There is no place to customize text for subject or body. It is the same for when I enter edit mode. Attached are screen shots of the email sent out, and the create and edit for the notification rule. I want to be able to change the subject and body of this notification email. Is that possible? To understand the environment we are on Windchill version 11.0 M030-CPS07. 

[MikeLockwood]

Haven't looked at notification in a while - but did just now.  I thought the options for text were there but appears that you are correct - not available.

As another user commented, PTC hasn't really developed these much in many releases.

So, left with using subscription.

[kwoodley]

The lack of customization of the Notification Rule body and subject won't deter me from wanting to use the Notification Rule concept still. I can apply a Notification Rule at the Domain level and this change will affect products that already exist in our system, adding the notification rule to all existing files. This is much more concise than trying to maintain a subscription on each of the several thousand files in our Windchill system.

[ScottMorris]

Subscriptions are functional based on 90's technology and email. You can get them to do some basic tasks for you, but there is so much to be desired. 

Here is a list of old enhancements that are all outstanding. 
https://community.ptc.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?filter=location,authorId&q=subscription&location=idea-board:WindchillIdeas&author_id=116&collapse_discussion=true 

[jvonzastrow1]

You could also look at using Change management instead of Promotion request. With Windchill 12 you can easy select to only allow revise from a change notice. Using the workflows for Change Management you can notify users in a Role or group when needed. Change Management is a more mature process than Promotion. A better name would be Release and Change Management, as it also can be used for the first release of objects. You can also do it with Windchill 11.x using ad hoc access policy, but it is more work to setup than with Windchill 12.

[kwoodley]

Our Windchill version is 11.0 M030-CPS07. I don't expect us to be updating to 12 anytime soon. But the robust features of the Change Management in 12 might be useful enough to transition out of Promotion Requests.