Sending and reminders
When an email goes out, and how often your employees are chased, is controlled per rule in the Settings tab of the rule editor, in the sending area. The defaults suit most organizations: event emails go out immediately, feedback reminders after 7 and 14 days, and target agreement reminders 7 days before the deadline.
Immediately, when the event happens
Immediate sending is the normal case: the email goes out as soon as the event occurs. For feedback invitations this option is called “Invitation”, for sealing “Confirmation request”, and for user invitations “Account invitation”.
Chasing participants: reminders for feedbacks
You set up reminders as their own rule, using the Reminder sending option. They are sent a configurable number of days after the invitation, and only to people who haven’t yet completed their participation. Anyone who is already done is left alone.
By default, every feedback process comes with a 1st reminder (after 7 days) and a 2nd reminder (after 14 days). You can adjust the days, disable reminders, or add more reminder rules.
Reminding before the deadline: target agreements
For a target agreement reminder, the value counts backwards: the email is sent the configured number of days before the deadline of the target agreement or the goals that are due. That gives everyone involved time to react before anything becomes overdue.
For the full instructions, including where the deadlines come from, see Set up reminders for target agreements.
Bundle several notifications
A supervisor who has to assess twelve employees doesn’t need twelve invitations. That is what the Send as digest area in the Settings tab is for, a time window in minutes. Out of the box it says 0: every email goes out immediately, one by one.
With a number in it, easyreview collects the notifications of that rule for the same person. Each further one inside the window restarts the clock. Only once things stay quiet does a single email go out with everything collected. The screenshot shows 60 minutes. If the twelve invitations go out together, the supervisor gets a single email with all twelve questionnaires.
For feedbacks, “Invitation & reminders” and “Results released” can be bundled; for nominations, every email except “Invitation confirmed” and the two nomination period emails. What the nomination emails collect is described in Notifications for nominations.
What the bundled email says
The bundled email has its own subject and body, in the Bundled tab right next to Content. This text applies as soon as several collected notifications come together. If only one is left in the end, the normal single email from the Content tab goes out.
A list block lists the collected notifications one below the other; for invitations it is the “Invitation list” with name, perspective and a link to the questionnaire. Placeholders about a single person, such as [Reviewee Name], refer to the first notification outside this block. Word the rest of the text so it fits all of them.
The tab shows where the text stands:
- off: the rule doesn’t bundle, so the text isn’t used right now. “Turn on bundling” in the tab takes you to the field in the settings.
- Template: subject and body are still the built-in default text.
Check the bundled text with the preview at the bottom of the Bundled tab. “Show preview” displays the email with sample rows in the list block, and “Send Preview” sends it to your own address.
Writing to specific perspectives only
Rules in a feedback process apply per perspective. Under Perspectives you choose which perspectives the rule applies to, for example only the supervisor perspective (external assessment) or only the self-assessment. At least one perspective must be selected.
This lets you word invitations and reminders separately for self-assessment and external assessment, and time them differently. That’s why the built-in default rules are already split by perspective (for example “Invitation (external assessment)” and “Invitation (self-assessment)”).