Set up maintenance reminders

Maintenance reminders in Equipment Management are set on each equipment item. Give the item a Responsible, and set First notification (how many days before the due date the first e-mail goes out) and Reminder interval (days) (how often the e-mail is repeated). Every morning the system checks each active equipment item. The item’s Responsible gets the first e-mail on the first morning the item is yellow or red, and then again every Reminder interval (days) days while it stays yellow or red; with Reminder interval (days) 0, only one e-mail is sent per due period. Nobody else is mailed. A user with the Admin right on the Equipment row can also have the e-mails grouped, so that each Responsible gets one e-mail per group of items instead of one per item.

Before you start

To change an item’s fields you need the Edit right on the Equipment row. To set up grouped e-mails on the Admin tab you need the Admin right on the Equipment row. Your user administrator sets these rights.
For an equipment item, reminders follow its next due date: the Due date of its newest maintenance record, or, before it has any maintenance record, Purchasing / Start date plus the days of its Maintenance interval. Maintenance records start once Purchasing / Start date, Maintenance interval and Responsible are all filled in; see Add equipment. Without a Responsible, nobody is reminded.
The Responsible list contains users who are not deactivated and have the Edit right or higher on the Equipment row, including users from another company account or from Antenor who have been given access to your company. A user who is already Responsible for the item stays selectable for it even after losing that right.

Steps

Set reminders on an item

Open Equipment Management and click the item in the list. The item page opens.
In the Equipment / maintenance section, choose the person who should get the reminders in Responsible.
In First notification, type the number of days before the due date that the first e-mail should go out. The question mark next to the field explains: “Number of days prior to due date to start the notifications”.
In Reminder interval (days), type how many days should pass between repeated e-mails. The question mark explains: “Leave this at 0 to not be reminded after the first notification e-mail”.
Check that Active is set to Active. Inactive items never send reminders.

Each field is saved as soon as you leave it; there is no Save button.

Group the e-mails (Admin right on Equipment)

Open Equipment Management and select the Admin tab.
Click the heading Notification management to open that section if it is closed.
Switch on Send grouped email. The setting is saved at once and applies to all equipment in your company.
Under Group by, click one or more dropdown fields to group on, for example a location. A selected field is highlighted; click it again to deselect it. Each click is saved at once. While no field is selected, the section shows “Please select at least one column.”

E-mails are grouped only while Send grouped email is on and at least one Group by field is selected. Switching Send grouped email off clears the Group by selection.

What you should see

The reminder e-mails are sent in the morning, to the item’s Responsible only, in that user’s own ABMS language. The e-mail lists the item with Internal id/name, the item’s dropdown values, the control equipment from the latest maintenance record, the due date (or “Expired” when the due date has passed), and a link that opens the item.

For an item, the status colour decides what is sent. In the subjects, “action” means the maintenance that is due:

Status of the item	Meaning	E-mail subject (one e-mail per item)
Green	The due date is more than First notification days away.	No e-mail.
Yellow	The due date is that many days away or fewer, but not today.	“Equipment action will expire: “ followed by the item’s Internal id/name
Red	The due date is today or has passed.	“Equipment action expired: “ followed by the item’s Internal id/name

With grouped e-mails, each Responsible gets one e-mail per combination of values in the Group by fields. The subject starts with “Equipment Group Notification”. When that person has only one item due, the item’s Internal id/name follows; then come the group’s field values as field name and value, for example “Equipment Group Notification - Location:Workshop”. The e-mail starts with “What follows is a list of equipment items that have or are about to expire. The list is grouped on:”, followed by the group’s values and a table with one row per item.

Good to know

When the first e-mail comes. For an item, the first e-mail goes out on the first morning the item is yellow or red. With First notification set to 0 there is no yellow period, so the first e-mail comes on the due date.
Repeats. With Reminder interval (days) above 0, the e-mail is repeated every that many days after the previous one, for as long as the item is yellow or red. With Reminder interval (days) set to 0, only one e-mail is sent per due period, also when the item goes from yellow to red.
Example. An item with First notification 14, Reminder interval (days) 7 and a due date of 31 March gets “will expire” e-mails on 17 and 24 March, an “expired” e-mail on 31 March, and further “expired” e-mails every 7 days after that. With Reminder interval (days) 0, it gets only the e-mail of 17 March.
Starting over. When the item turns green again, for example because the maintenance record is completed and the next due date is further ahead, the reminders stop. The next due period starts again with a first e-mail.
Grouped e-mails follow the same rules. In grouped mode, an item is included in the e-mail only on the mornings it would have been mailed on its own, so the first-e-mail and Reminder interval (days) rules above still apply per item.
No Responsible, no e-mail. If an item has no Responsible, or the Responsible user is deactivated, no e-mail is sent for it. Before a user is deactivated, change Responsible on each of their equipment items to another user. You can also transfer the items in the Equipment responsible panel on the Ownership transfer page; see Transfer ownership of a user’s items.
Inactive items. An item set to Inactive gets no reminders, and its status is not updated each day.
Grouping changes for everyone. Send grouped email and Group by apply to all Responsible users in your company, not only to you.

Why didn’t a reminder arrive?

Check these points for the equipment item:

Active is set to Active. Inactive items send no reminders.
Responsible is filled in, and that user is active (not deactivated) and has an e-mail address in ABMS. Only the Responsible is mailed.
The item is due soon: its due date is First notification days away or fewer, or has passed (yellow or red in the list). With 0, the first e-mail comes only on the due date. Reminders are checked each morning, so a change you make today is picked up the next morning.
Reminder interval (days): with 0, you get only one e-mail per due period, also when the item goes from yellow to red. With a higher number, the next e-mail comes that many days after the previous one, not every day.
The item turned green in between, for example because a maintenance record was completed. The reminders then start over with a first e-mail the next time the item is due.
Grouped e-mails: if Send grouped email is on and Group by fields are selected, the reminder comes as an e-mail with the subject “Equipment Group Notification”, together with other items, not as one e-mail per item.