Email Notification facility for Endevor

Products

• Endevor
• Endevor Natural Integration
• Endevor - ECLIPSE Plugin
• Endevor - Enterprise Workbench

Issue/Introduction

Endevor has an Email Notification facility that allows emails to be sent to Endevor users whenever certain events occur.

For example, users can be notified by email when a package requires their approval, or if an element they are working on has its sign-out overridden.

The Email Notification facility uses the Mainframe ID and Email ID Table (ESMTPTBL), which translate the Endevor user ID (or approver group name) into an email address.

The challenge with this implementation is that as the number of users at an organization grows, the maintenance of this table can become an onerous task. Every time a staff movement occurs, the administrator has to insert or remove the $ESMTP macro defining that user's MFID and EMAILID. To address this, a new default $ESMTP parameter, DFTID, can now be coded once on the initial macro call.

To enable the feature, only one value is permitted (DFTID=USERID). If the value is omitted, or coded as null (DFTID=), then AllFusion Endevor will continue to work as before.

This option changes how Endevor treats user IDs that are not explicitly listed in ESMTPTBL. Instead of bypassing unlisted IDs, Endevor will now try to send an email to them using an address constructed with the Endevor user ID suffixed with the default domain.

Environment

Release: All Supported Releases

Cause

 

Resolution

Sample Email Table (ESMTPTBL)

Code a very simple (vanilla) email table similar to the following:

  *******************************************************
  * FIRST INVOCATION - DEFINE "GLOBAL" VALUES           *
  *   ENABLE DEFAULT EMAIL ADDRESS CONSTRUCTION ? DFTID *
  *******************************************************
          $ESMTP HOSTNAME=smtpsrvr,                     X
                 DFTURL='http://xxxxxxxxx.xxxxxx.com',  X
                 DFTDOMAIN=xxxxxx.com,                  X
                 DFTID=USERID 
  *******************************************************
  * SUBSEQUENT INVOCATIONS - DEFINE APPROVER GROUP NAME *
  *   OR USERIDS THAT DON'T USE THE DEFAULT ADDRESS     *
  *******************************************************
          $ESMTP MFID=USERID01,EMAILID=Mickey.Mouse,  X
                 DOMAIN=external.com
           $ESMTP MFID=USERID02,EMAILID=DUMMY                  
  *******************************************************
  * LAST INVOCATION - END THE TABLE GENERATION          *
  *******************************************************
           $ESMTP CALL=END 

Now, when a package is cast requiring an approval from one or more users not defined in the table, for example USERID03 and USERID05, Endevor will send an email to [e-mail] and [e-mail] , in addition to emails to users defined in the table.

Valid Email Address or Alias

Of course, any email address identified by the new DFTID parameter still needs to be a valid SMTP address. That is, the Endevor user IDs must have corresponding email addresses or aliases.

For many organizations this is already the case; the mainframe user IDs, network and email IDs are all synchronized. Even if this is not already true, it is simple to set up an email alias on the email server, where all the information relating to a user's alternate email addresses is already defined (for example, SMTP, X500, alternate spellings, and so on).

In our example,USER TWO might have USERID02 as his TSO Userid and an alias [e-mail], which points to his default email address [e-mail].

Overriding the Default Email Address

Previously, if a particular user was not found in the email table, no email was sent. After you provide the new default DFTID=USERID, Endevor will always attempt to send the email. It is still possible to override the default email address to provide an alternate email, domain or URL, for any user.

To completely disable notifications for a particular user, simply provide a dummy or invalid email address. The default does not override any explicitly coded email address; therefore, if you leave an invalid email address in the ESMTPTBL table, no email is sent to that particular user.

Additional Information

For more information on the Email Notification facility and details on how to customize the (ESMTPTBL) email table, see Email Notification

For more information on email notification Exits, see Notification Utility Exit Programs