ECO email notification improvements

[Neil_Cross]

This is something else that seems like a bit of an after thought... I'm going to predict this won't be voted up as a tiny minority of Vault users will ever use this area of the software, but it's rubbish and needs improving, so here goes:

1) A GUI for editing the email template is required.  The email sent out by notification is extremely user unfriendly, unsightly, unprofessional and it would make the world of difference if this could be editable.  I don't mean an Autodesk controlled level of customisation either, I mean provide full HTML editing capability with the option of including property information and hyperlink control.

2) When adding additional recipients into the email notification, this needs to reference active directory.  There's no reason why it can't.  When I want to add someone within my organisation to the email list, I shouldn't have to type in their full email address "someone@mycompany.com".

3) A tick box option to control whether or not an email is sent on a specific ECO transition, rather than a black & white it's on or off setting which is currently how it works.  Most people only give a toot about the ECO being raised, they don't really need to be told every time it moves from one state to the next.  I get that this is to prompt someone that work is to be done, but more flexibility would be nice.

[dvsmiller9]

All points I completely agree with.

[mthomas]

amen! This is SO badly needed

[dvsmiller9]

There is also a problem with the notification service stopping if it doesn't get a response from the email server it is sending through.  We have been having some communication dropouts with Exchange and Outlook.  I am told by Autodesk support after reviewing our logs that Vault does not get responses from our SMTP server and therefore quits.  I have to issue an 'iisreset' on the Vault server to re-enable email notifications.

I would like to see the Vault server keep trying to send the emails in its queue, retrying after a configurable amount of time.  Email servers do this, building up their queue until communication is restored.  Let's see Vault do this, please.

[jeamy.baena]

Hi,

Totally agree with Neil_Cross and dMiller.

Another one: email notifications for due date ECOs is close to fulfillment.

[Neil_Cross]

Almost a year since I logged this, obviously I was wrong when I figured it won't be voted up! However, it needs more support as I'm pretty confident ECOs will not receive the overhaul they need unless there's a big outcry from the user base.  Thanks for the support and comments though!

[bcrawford2015]

New user of Vault, coming from a Solidworks PDM and Creo/Teamcenter background.  Major problem with trying to execute "up front" ECO approvals, essentially a Change Board of several participants, but then using a simple execution process to get the work done and review and approve.  If I add multiple reviewers to the up-front part of the process (for Change Board), everyone on the routing will still get an e-mail notification for every ECO status change, including rejections/withdrawals.  Not only are the e-mail formats unpleasant to deal with, the sheer volume of unnecessary ones will mean the important ones will get overlooked in the flood.  E-mail notifications should be made "recipient editable", so that a workflow can be established to include a larger number of people, but only certain ones receive auto-emails, and only at the stages that directly affect each person.  I can't afford to paralyze our business with dozens (hundreds?) of e-mails a day...the participants will simply ignore all, forcing us back to a painfully manual process that removes the very benefit of a PDM environment for which we purchased it.

[Neil_Cross]

@bcrawford2015 This is exactly what happened at the place I'm at now, it was entirely predictable that the ECO emails became formalised spam and people just filtered them off into a separate Outlook folder... they got ignored, important things went un-noticed, exactly like you say could happen has happened with us.  We ended up contracting Autodesk to create a new addon to Vault which was essentially a whole new ECO email module, we disabled the out-the-box notification system and created our own.  The recipient list is now customisable per state and per business unit, users can select who receives an email via a tick box list of target email addresses and that list is approvers when it should be approvers and engineers when it needs to be engineers... it sucks that we have to do that but I guess the point is you can design your own workflow to suit your own needs should it come to that.

[bcrawford2015]

Thanks very much for confirming what we're seeing.  Under pressure to launch the process ASAP, but doing so without establishign a very simple, user friendly protocol set up will doom it to failure.  The inflexibility of the workflow and e-mail notification processes is disappointing, but we'll find a way to do what you did.

If Autodesk reads these posts as a means of improving their product, this string would be extremely important.  I totally agree with the earlier term of "rubbish".  Let's hope they take notice!

[bcrawford2015]

Per notes above, I have decided to bypass the auto-notification hurdles and adopt a hybrid form of change management.  Reviews and approvals will be done outside of Vault, with only the authorizing decision points recorded and used as ECO attachments.  Processing then proceeds within Vault by only a small community of users, limiting the potential endless e-mails....the only system-generated e-mails to the business will occur at release.  This may prove to be the permanent resolution, or we may have to adjust going forward.  Still see no net benefit in paying Autodesk for a fix to known inconvenience.

[ian.kelsall]

We have a customer who would like to modify the Email template so they can re-order the information and add/remove data fields to suit their organisation.

[cantieny]

And yet here it is 2017 and still they have not fixed this.  I wonder if Autodesk asks themselves why more users aren't using Vault change orders?

Chuck

[takahashihiroki]

Also wish to have a "user select" button in the e-mail notification dialog where you can select users from Vault user list since here is a e-mail address box...

[jeamy.baena]

I totally agree with the users who have commented here.

Ideally, the user could also create and use their own distribution lists. Only with this functionality in large projects, the number of approval routes that are created could be greatly reduced, because their administration is currently very limited.

I support another functionality that is to be able save templates for these notifications, and avoid to have each time be copying and pasting repetitive content from other sources.

Finally, as everyone can see, ECO has been a very valuable feature in any PDM system. In vault with great potential has not had major improvements over many years. I saw with sadness that the situation was the same in Vault 2018. As I see it, Autodesk moved much of the staff for the Fusion 360 (cloud solutions) area and there are not enough staff upgrading Vault. For this reason, every time we see less improvements in each new version. And the wish list grows more and more.

I hope that Autodesk listen us and make more core improvements like ECOs engine, Vault really need that ASAP!

[matthew.angeli]

The change order email notification is  "rubbish and needs improving!"

Totally agree!

Please Autodesk, update the Vault email notification and change order process!  This is terrible to work with.  It's a good beta start, but not as an actual product.

Please advise when this will be considered.

[Anonymous]

Nothing more to say. We need an improvement!

[dvsmiller9]

There's also these ideas:

169 votes: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-ideas/vault-generated-email-customization/idi-p/3509882

152 votes: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-ideas/email-notification-on-lifecycle-transition/idi-p/3513220

All of these have a status of 'Future Consideration'. How far in the future?

[frank.gavilar]

5,5 years later... Still no improvement. 

Dear Autodesk,

we NEED to use a review and approvement system. We WANT to use the ECO system. At the moment your lack of interest in the ECO system by Autodesk is making ECO a really though sell for the Engineers and System Administrators to the rest of the company. Please do not force us to go back to using printed out drawings and having to hand them out to all involved.