TABLE OF CONTENTS
- How to use Message Events
- Configure a Throwing Message Event
- Add recipients
- Compose email
- Show and edit HTML
- Configure a Catching Message Event
Message events are extremely useful as they enable processes to send emails to Process Automation users in different roles or groups as well as send emails to external users based on form data. They can also be used to send process messages which can be used to trigger connected workflows and start other process applications. For example, messages can be used to notify a user that the process has progressed to a certain phase, to send an automatic response that a registered case has been received, to inform an interested party that the process has passed a milestone, or to inform one or more interested parties that the process has ended.
In the BPMN standard, Start, End, and Intermediate Events can have the type: Message.
Note: Process Automation currently supports catching and throwing intermediate message events, but neither catching or throwing interrupting/non-interrupting intermediate message boundary events. If you want in-process communication, use signal events instead.
How to use Message Events
Throwing Message Events
Are used to send messages. They are represented by a darker email symbol. The event is configured either as an Email message or as a Process Message which will be thrown/sent when the event is triggered.
Catching Message Events
Are used to receive messages. They are represented by a lighter email symbol. The event is configured to receive a specific process message and when this message is sent, the event will be triggered.
Note: You can only have one condition connected to an event at a time. If you connect more than one, only the first will be executed.
Configure a Throwing Message Event
1. Open the settings panel by double-clicking on the Intermediate event and choose a Throwing event trigger.
2. Open the Configure message interface.
From this panel you can chose to send either an Email message or a Process message from the tabs at the top of the window.
3. If you want to configure an email message the interface lets you:
- Add recipients from four quick categories
- Compose your email subject and body
- Add a Reply to address
- Add a From name
- Add attachments
Add recipients
Message events have the capability of sending e-mails to the role members set in the process model, to groups within a work space, to an e-mail address that has been filled out in a form field, or to custom email addresses.
Note: If you want to add multiple e-mail addresses via a form field, they need to be separated with a comma (,).
Note: You can add multiple categories by selecting them. It is possible to combine several email addresses from roles, groups, form fields, and custom addresses. If an email address is present in two places, for example in a role and in a group, only one email will be sent to that person.
Compose email
The email body text editor has some basic formatting functionality as well as the ability to edit HTML.
Tip: It is possible to add variables in the e-mail text that reference information from the process instance or from form fields. For example, in a process you may have a form with a field for reviewers comments allowing the reviewer to document the outcome of a review. The text filled out in the reviewers comments field can be inserted into the e-mail text through a variable and sent to the recipient of your choice.
Read more about how to reference variables here.
Add a reply-to address
This sets a reply-to address that will show up in the recipients address field if they want to respond to the message sent by Process Automation. This allows users to configure a reply to address of their own instead of noreply@bariumlive.com
Add from name
This sets a sender name that will show up in the email header.
Note: The default From name will be the name of the application.
Attach files
Files up to 20MB can be attached to an email thrown by a message event. It is possible to attach files to emails sent from message events in three different ways:
- You can send files taken from attachment form fields by selecting the form field. These files can be of any format.
- You can send an entire data object form as a PDF file by modeling the data object as an input to the send message event.
Doing this will cause it to show up in the attachment field automatically and sending the message will convert the form to PDF and make it available as an attachment to the email.
- You can send generated documents as either PDF or docx files by modeling them as inputs to the send message event.
If you want the document to be converted to PDF instead of the default docx format, simply double-click on the document template modeled as an input and chose PDF generation.
Generated Documents modeled as inputs to the send message event will show up in the attachment field automatically and sending the message will make it available as an attachment to the email.
Note: If the total size of a message exceeds 25 MB, the message will not be sent and an error will be generated in the Event log.
Show and edit HTML
It is possible to create a custom and styled e-mail message by clicking on the Show and edit HTML button. This will present the HTML mode of the editor and allow you to add or edit the e-mails HTML code and attributes.
You can use standard HTML tags (preferably <Tables>) and add CSS style attributes to set the color, size, and formatting of text and more.
Example:
Configure a Catching Message Event
If you want to start a process with a process message you can read more on how to configure it here.
Catching message events allow you to await a signal from another system before the process moves forward. The signal will need to contain the instance Id and the message name. More information is available in API Methods - Instances, under the section “Send information to instances”.
1. Open the settings panel by double-clicking on the Intermediate event and choose a Catching event trigger.
2. Open the Configure message interface.
From this window you can set the Message name
There are options to add Message Fields and Roles to the message.
Note: This is not yet a supported feature in intermediate-catching message events. Message fields mapped to a form will not be updated.
Warning: If you leave the key in a message field empty, you will not be able to deploy the application.
