Email correspondence

Organizations depend on timely communication to establish a shared understanding of transactions or assignments. In Pega Platform™, the system can send automated email correspondence to all relevant parties. For example, consider a requirement for an automobile claims application. The application sends an email to customers when their claims are successfully filed, and any time the status of the claim changes.

To achieve effective communication, answer three simple questions:

1. With whom do I need to communicate?
2. How will the communication be composed?
3. When does the communication need to be sent?

When configuring correspondence, first determine, With whom do I need to communicate? One option is to send correspondence to a specific email address. This option depends on a consistent email address. Any time the email address changes, you must update the application or the correspondence will not be received by the appropriate person.

To avoid recurring changes to an email address, you can use fields, participants, and user references to send email correspondence.

Fields

You can send an email based on the value of a field.

For example, a new customer signs up for an account. The customer enters an email address in the Customer email field. When the customer submits information, Pega Platform uses the value entered in the field by the customer to send a confirmation email.

Participants

Pega Platform can also use participant information to send correspondence to a group of stakeholders. Case participants are people, businesses, and organizations that are involved in a case. By managing case participants, you can define their relationship with a case and share important case updates with them. Pega Platform identifies the recipient's email address from the participant information. An email is sent to any user associated with the selected participant. For example, your company grants car loans to the employees of an organization. To send loan updates to key members of the organization, you can add these members as participants in Car Loan cases.

In Pega Platform, you can use the following default participants for correspondence:

User references

In cases where the correspondence needs to be sent to one specific user in your application, you can use a user reference. The relevant user reference fields are defined in the case type and the associated data types. You can define a user reference field in the case type data model. For example, the head of the IT department receives status changes for high-priority issues. A user reference field called IT Manager is defined in the data model and used to send email correspondence to the appropriate user.

Two user reference fields, Create Operator and Update Operator, are automatically defined in the data model for each data type associated with the case type. For example, in an application with Request, Results, and Terms of use data types, each data type is listed with its respective Create Operator and Update Operator. 

After determining who receives the communication, ask yourself, How will the communication be composed? Pega Platform provides a rich text editor to create formatted email correspondence. The editor allows you to reuse data from the case in the email. For example, you can enter a greeting with the customer's first and last name by referencing the fields that capture this information in the case.

You can also use existing correspondence templates. Pega Platform provides out-of-the-box templates that use case processing data, such as the case ID (.pyID) and case status (.pyStatusWork).

The last question you need to answer is When does the communication need to be sent? 

Send email automation

Pega Platform simplifies sending correspondence by allowing you to add a Send email automation to your case to send an email. When a case reaches the Send email step, the email is automatically sent to the selected parties. For example, in a Place order process, users select order items, the shipping address, and the payment method. Once users confirm the order, the case automatically sends users a confirmation email.

Case level notifications

Another option is to configure email notifications at the case level. This allows you to automatically send a notification when an assignment in the case is routed to a user worklist. Case level notifications are automatically configured to send to the user associated with the worklist. Because the email notification is configured at the case level, compose a relevant email for all users who receive the notification during case processing. If the message is left blank, the default message is used:

For example, in an employee onboarding case type, the following default message is sent to an HR member: