New business rule: Document- Notify all implicit followers (v.23) – ERP.BG

OK, we've created a new business rule, but why are we dedicating a separate blog post for it?

Because this is a new kind of a business rule, that drive deeper social interaction with you. This business rule is a typical example of achieving a remarkably complex result thanks to Social ERP and something that's a routine action - changing the status of a document.

What does this business rule do, exactly?

First of all, the rule is triggered when the state of the document changes to PLANNED+.

It then checks all the references in the document to see which users are following the entities behind them.

Let's see the following example:

1. You have a sales order

2. And let's assume the following:

* Customer entity Joey Weber (the sales order's customer) is followed by User X.

* Customer entity Danielle Robles ("Ship To Customer") is followed by User Y.

* Party entity Sky Marketing Ltd ("From Party") - User Z.

3. Now, if we RELEASE this sales order, all (implicit) followers of the document will receive a notification.

Why "implicit" followers?

Because these users don't follow the actual document, but entities that the document references.

This is very convenient in cases where you are interested in the entire document flow for certain customers. This way, you don't need to follow each document individually, but only the customers that concern you.

Of course this applies to every other document's reference. And not only for the sales order, but for any other type of document.

Here's another example,

You're following a specific Project Task. And so what?

You'll receive a notification for each Service Activity referencing this project task when its state changes to PLANNED+.

Following an entity

Just to remind you.

You can follow any entity in ERP.net.

Just open its definition and click on the star.

What if the star is filled? Like this,

This means that you're already following this entity.

Aftermath

Below you can see the outcome when the business rule is invoked. More precisely, this is a notification intended for User X, because according to the example above, User X follows the customer Joey Weber.