Creating email notifications

e-timecard is an on-line record-keeping tool for labor. In the government contracting environment, it’s imperative that you track labor charges as they are incurred. e-timecard monitors whether employees are entering their hours daily. If they are not, then e-timecard can issue email warnings to them.

You can use email notifications in the following scenarios.

• To email employees and/or time card approvers when reported hours do not equal standard daily hours. The program sends notification only if the hours are not approved. The email notifications program uses the Business Days settings in the employee's employee type to determine the days of the week to validate whether entries are standard.

• To report a rejected time card to an employee.

• To notify an approver when an employee has submitted a time card.

See the formats that e-timecard uses for these messages.

The instructions below tell you how to create email notifications. First, you will set criteria. Then, you will submit your criteria and indicate when you want to run the process.

Note: e-timecard uses two different programs to send email messages: email notifications that you set up as described below, and the automatic email program that is not affected by these settings. Read a description of the differences between these two email programs.

To set criteria for email notifications

1. From the JAMIS Administration home page > Daily Processes tab, under Management, click Email notifications. Or, from the top of any JAMIS Administration screen, click Management > Email Notifications. The Email Notifications screen appears.

2. Under When reported hours do not equal standard daily hours, the check boxes for Notify Employee and Notify Time Card Approver are automatically selected. If you do not want to send email to either employees or approvers, click the specific check box to turn off the option.
   
   Note: If either Notify Employee or Notify Time Card Approver are selected, then the program also sends notification when employees have not created a time card for the date range that you specify in the next step.

3. The Date Range fields refer to the work dates. To limit the email notification to specific dates, enter a date or a range of dates to check for standard hours. When you enter a range of dates, the program verifies each day in the range.
   
   Today’s system date defaults into the Through field. You can change it, but a warning message appears if you enter a date that is beyond the system date. To continue with a date past the system date, click OK.
   Hint: You can enter dates manually. You can also click to the right of either date field to select a date from a calendar.

4. To limit the email notifications to a specific set of employee types, enter the range in the From and Through fields.

5. To send notifications for rejected time cards, click the Notify Employee if Time Cards are Rejected check box.

6. To notify approvers when their employees submit time cards, click the check box(es) for each type of approver to whom you want to send notification.

Next step

Once you have established the criteria for email notifications, you can submit the process to run immediately or at a later time.

To submit email notifications

1. Click OK on the Email Notifications screen after you have set all criteria. The Process Queue Setup screen appears.

2. The Start Date field defaults to today’s system date. You can change it if you want the process to run on another day.

3. The Start Time field defaults to the computer’s time. You can change it to a later time if you want.

4. You can establish dependencies, which means other processes that must run prior to the email notifications. To do this, select up to three process IDs in the Depend On fields in the order that you want them to run.

5. The Output Option fields default to your company’s standard settings for output. You can make changes to these fields for this process only.

6. Click OK to process.

7. A dialog box appears with the process ID. Make a note of it and click OK. The program runs the email notifications request and places your process in the process queue.

8. From the top of the screen, click Management > Process Queue. The Process Queue Management screen appears. Under Filters, your user ID and the status of Not Completed default, and the bottom section of the screen automatically lists processes that match these criteria.
   
   Hint: If you do not see your process, select a different status from the dropdown list, then click Retrieve. For example, if you think that your process may be finished, select Completed. If you have trouble finding your process, you can select All to view all processes, though this may result in a large list.

9. Look for your process ID to view the status of the email notifications. The Status column shows that the process is pending, running, or failed.