Targeted communications
Summarize
Summary of Targeted Communications
The Targeted Communications application allows users to create and send articles and emails to both internal and external customers. Users with specific roles can author publication articles and manage email notifications to employees, customer contacts, and consumers. Articles can be accessed through self-service portals and can include optional email notifications sent to recipients when published.
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Key Features
- Roles and Permissions: Users with the publications author and administrator roles can create and manage publications.
- Dynamic Recipient Lists: Recipients can be selected using a condition builder, scripts, or manual uploads, allowing for flexible audience targeting.
- Publication Management: Authors can set publish and expiration dates, request reviews, and monitor publication status.
- Email Notifications: Optional notifications can be sent to recipients, maintaining privacy through BCC.
- Workflows: Two default workflows are provided for instant publishing or approval-required publishing, which can be updated by administrators.
- Publication Stages: Articles progress through various stages such as Author, Review, Ready to Publish, Published, Expired, and Cancelled.
Key Outcomes
With the Targeted Communications application, users can streamline communication efforts by easily managing publication processes and ensuring timely delivery of information to specified audiences. This enhances engagement with customers and employees, allowing for effective dissemination of important updates and announcements. Users can expect improved monitoring of publication reach and access via designated portals.
The Targeted Communications application provides the ability to create and send articles and emails to internal and external customers.
Users with the publications author (sn_publications.author) and publications administrator (sn_publications.admin) roles can use the Targeted Communications application to author publication articles and emails for employees, customer contacts and accounts, and consumers. Articles are available for viewing from the self-service portals and can also be sent out as email notifications.
Each publication article includes content and a specified list of recipients. Articles can also include optional email notification. Recipients lists can be created dynamically by using a condition builder to identify the desired conditions, by running scripts, or by manual file upload. Recipients can be added to or removed from a list manually and lists can have both dynamically generated and manually added records of the same type.
The process of publishing articles is based on workflows and two default workflows are provided: one to publish articles instantly and one that requires approval prior to publishing. Publication administrators can update workflows and add users with the publications approver (sn_publications.approver) role to perform reviews. Both authors and administrators can monitor publications and see which users have received and viewed the information.
Customer contacts and consumers can view publications by logging in to the Customer Service Portal or the Consumer Service Portal and clicking the Publications link in the portal header. Employees can view these publications by navigating to in the application navigator.
Publication article stages
Publication articles progress through several stages which are displayed in a process flow formatter on the Publication form.
| Stage | Definition |
|---|---|
| Author | The initial state of the publication creation process. |
| Review | Publications that are waiting for review. A publication cannot be updated when it is in the Review stage. |
| Ready To Publish | Publications that have been reviewed and are ready to be published. |
| Published | Publications that that have reached their Publish Date. |
| Expired | Publications that have reached their Expiry Date or that have been manually expired. |
| Cancelled | Pending publications that have been cancelled. |
States are shown in a process flow formatter at the top of the Publication form. The current state is indicated by a blue underline. States that have been completed are indicated by a blue check mark.
Publication lists
The Targeted Communications application menu includes several views of publication records.
| State | Definition |
|---|---|
| Active Publications | Includes publications in the following stages:
|
| Draft Publications | Includes publications that have been created and sent for review. |
| Expired Publications | Includes publications that have reached their Expiry Date or have been set to Expired. |
Targeted communications workflows
Starting with the Zurich release, legacy publication workflows for the Targeted Communications (com.sn_publications) application have been migrated to low code flows in Workflow Studio. The functionality of the flows remains the same.