Using event notification triggers is a smart, simple, cost-effective way to improve productivity.

The concept behind event notification triggers is fairly simple. As the name suggests, the goal of implementing event notification triggers is to provide "notification" to someone when a significant business "event" occurs. This is a proactive means of "pushing" information from the system. This may come in the form of a simple email message. However, the benefits of a simple message are limited.

The challenges are to make it flexible enough to meet the needs of virtually any event, to include intelligent information from your enterprise systems, and to make it technically simple enough for it to be cost-effective to implement anywhere within your enterprise systems. In this article, we will explore what it takes to implement event notification triggers.

Consider your situation. Your company has an integrated system that collects accurate information in real time in the key functional areas of your business. This is a great accomplishment. Yet you look around and see that human-intensive manual processes are happening everywhere every day. This should make you think. Is your system providing value only for financial reporting and business analysis? Don't get me wrong. These are critical aspects of any business. But since you have this great system in place, why not provide real-time value to the areas that keep your business running on a day-to-day basis?  Event notification triggers are a simple way to begin.

Hopefully, you noted this above, but just to be sure, here is a simple description of an event notification trigger: When a significant business event occurs, notify the appropriate people with the information necessary to take action (or for informational purposes only).

Here are a few examples to get you thinking:

•·      A transaction has caused the available inventory quantity on a critical product to drop to zero. Notify the materials manager with the item number, description, date, time, and an intelligent message.

•·      Your normal delivery time for stock products is within 48 hours, but an order has been accepted that requires same-day delivery. Notify picking and shipping with the order number, customer name, item number, description, quantity, and a PDF attachment of the order or pick slip.

•·      Consider a workflow example. A requisition has been entered. Based on its dollar value, it must be approved by a manager. Notify the manager that a requisition is pending approval. Once approved, notify the buyer to convert it to a purchase order. Once the purchase order is created, notify the requisitioner of the PO number and expected delivery date. Once the item is received, notify the requisitioner that it has been received.

Contrast these examples with the way things are happening now. You get nightly (next morning) reports of products with available inventory quantity of zero, and then you take action. When an order is taken for same-day delivery, your order entry person walks the order or pick slip out to shipping or calls shipping with this information. The list of examples abounds across departments. Only by working with the people who do the job daily can you determine what benefits will come from having the knowledge in real time.

OK, now that I've got your mind going, let's work through building the architecture necessary to make this work. There are just a few setup tasks, a relatively simple database, and three programs (functions) that perform all of the work.

Setup

Setup requires three things:

•·      Access to an email server--Any area of your system that will be allowed to trigger an event notification must have access to an email server. On the System i, set up the SMTP email service.

•·      Access to a disk location for attachments--Standard (reusable) attachments must have an accessible place to reside so that the event messages can use them.

•·      Tool to generate PDF documents--Any spooled file to be sent can be placed into a dynamic email attachment once it is converted to a PDF.

Database

Here's what you'll need for your database:

•·      Event master file--Define the event with an accurate business description.

•·      Message file--Define the text of the message, the format, and the variable data to be included.

•·      Distribution list file--Define the list of people to receive the message.

•·      Attachment file--Define the location of the attachment(s) to be included.

•·      Event notification trigger file--Tie all of the above pieces together (event, message, distribution, attachment).

Figures 1 and 2 below show what your database structure and file layouts should be.

Figure 1: Your database should be structured like this. (Click images to enlarge.)

    FILE   : XAMEEP               Event Master               

    LIBRARY: MC@EDDF                                      

    FORMAT : XAMEEP               Event Master                

  DEC    

    FIELD NAME  FIELD DESCRIPTION                FROM     TO    LEN TYP POS    

    ----------  ------------------------------  -----  -----  ----- --- ---    

    ENEVNT      Event Identification                1     10     10  A      

    LANG        Language Code                      11     13      3  A   

    ENEVDS      Event Description                  14     63     50  A      

    ENEVED      Event Extra Description            64    113     50  A         

    USRX        Created/Updated by User           114    123     10  A        

    CYDX        Date Created/Updated              124    131      8  S   0   

    TIMX        Time Created/Updated              132    137      6  S   0   

    FILE   : XAMEMP               Event Message Master                       

    LIBRARY: MC@EDDF                                                  

    FORMAT : XAMEMP               Event Message Master                        

DEC    

    FIELD NAME  FIELD DESCRIPTION                FROM     TO    LEN TYP POS    

    ----------  ------------------------------  -----  -----  ----- --- ---    

    ENMSID      Message Identification              1     10     10  A     

    LANG        Language Code                      11     13      3  A    

    ENMSSQ      Message Sequence                   14     15      3  P   0   

    ENMSTX      Message Text                       16     85     70  A     

    ENEOLN      Message End-of-Line Indicator      86     86      1  A         

    USRX        Created/Updated by User            87     96     10  A         

    CYDX        Date Created/Updated               97    104      8  S   0     

    TIMX        Time Created/Updated              105    110      6  S   0     

    FILE   : XAMEAP               Event Notification Attachments               

    LIBRARY: MC@EDDF                                                    

    FORMAT : XAMEAP               Event Notification Attachments               

DEC    

    FIELD NAME  FIELD DESCRIPTION                FROM     TO    LEN TYP POS    

    ----------  ------------------------------  -----  -----  ----- --- ---    

    ENATID      Attachment ID                       1     10     10  A     

    ENATLN      Language Code                      11     13      3  A     

    ENATSQ      Attachment Sequence                14     15      3  P   0    

    ENATPT      Attachment Path (IFS)              16     85     70  A        

    ENATFN      Attachment Filename                86    155     70  A        

    USRX        Created/Updated by User           156    165     10  A         

    CYDX        Date Created/Updated              166    173      8  S   0     

    TIMX        Time Created/Updated              174    179      6  S   0     

    FILE   : XAMELP               Event Distribution List Master               

    LIBRARY: MC@EDDF                                                   

    FORMAT : XAMELP               Event Distribution List Master               

DEC    

    FIELD NAME  FIELD DESCRIPTION                FROM     TO    LEN TYP POS    

    ----------  ------------------------------  -----  -----  ----- --- ---    

    ENDLID      Distribution List Identifier        1     10     10  A         

    ENDLSQ      Distribution List Sequence         11     12      3  P   0     

    ENDLTY      Distribution List Type             13     15      3  A         

    ENMAIL      Email Address                      16     65     50  A    

    LANG        Language Code                      66     68      3  A    

    USRX        Created/Updated by User            69     78     10  A         

    CYDX        Date Created/Updated               79     86      8  S