Notifications are essential for keeping your team informed and ensuring tasks are completed on time. This guide addresses the most common issues related to notification delivery, content, and configuration, providing clear steps to resolve them.
How do I search for a notification?
1. Navigate to Administration → General → Notification History.
2. Click on the Advanced Search button.
A drop-down appears allowing you to search by various options:
Notification: Search by the notification title.
Trigger: Search by the trigger title.
Source: Filter by how the notification was delivered (Notification, Testing, or Mail System).
Recipients: Search by a specific user.
Email Address: Search by a specific email address.
From Date / To Date: Search by a specific date range.
Message Body: Search for keywords within the message.
Email Subject: Search for keywords within the subject line.
3. Once you have entered your criteria, click the Search button. The Notification History will filter and display your results.
How do I view a notification?
1. Navigate to Administration → General → Notification History.
2. Once you have located the email you would like to view, expand the Actions menu by clicking the dropdown arrow. From the list, select View.
3. A pop-up window will appear showing the recipient, date and time sent, email address, any CC'd recipients, the subject, and the body of the email. When you are done, click the Close button.
How do I resend a notification?
1. Navigate to Administration → General → Notification History.
2. Locate the email you would like to resend and expand the Actions menu. From the displayed list, select Resend.
3. A pop-up window will appear confirming that you have resent the notification.
Solving Notification Delays and Delivery Failures
When notifications are delayed or not being received, it can disrupt your team's workflow. Here are the most common causes and how to fix them.
1. Check the Notification Schedule
If you notice that notifications triggered late in the day are only sent the following morning, a schedule may be enabled. This feature prevents emails from being sent outside of specific hours.
How to check and adjust the schedule:
1. Navigate to Administration → General → Notifications.
2. Select the Settings tab.
3. Here, you can either disable the schedule entirely or adjust the time range to better suit your operational hours.
2. Understanding Notification Queues
To ensure system stability, non-urgent notifications are processed through a queueing system rather than being sent out all at once.
Batch Processing: The system groups non-urgent notifications into a queue and sends them out periodically in batches. This means if a large number of emails are triggered simultaneously (for example, from a bulk course assignment), you may notice a delay as the system works through the queue.
Expected Delivery Time: While this process can sometimes take a few hours for very large batches, all non-urgent notifications are expected to be delivered within 24 hours.
Urgent vs. Non-Urgent Notifications: This queueing system does not affect urgent communications. Important notifications like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) codes and Forgot Password requests are always sent instantly.
3. If Emails Are Not Being Received
When the Notification History shows an email as "Sent" but users aren't receiving it, the issue often lies with the recipient's email server.
First Steps:
Confirm the email appears in Administration → General → Notification History. This log confirms the system has successfully sent the email.
Ask the user to check their junk or spam folders.
Engage Your IT Team:
Ask your IT team to whitelist ELMO's sending IP addresses: 54.240.30.12 and 54.240.30.13. They may also need to whitelist the domain amazonses.com, which is our mail server. If emails are being rejected due to DMARC policies, you will need to set up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). Please raise a support ticket to receive the required CNAME records for your IT team to publish to your DNS provider. This verifies that emails sent from ELMO on your behalf are legitimate.
Customizing Notification Content and Appearance
Ensuring your notifications are clear and correctly branded is vital for user engagement.
1. Using Placeholders Correctly
Placeholders pull specific data into your emails, but they must be used correctly.
Check the Formatting: Placeholders will not work if formatted incorrectly. They must start and end with double colons (e.g.,
::FIRSTNAME::). A common error is a missing colon, which will prevent the data from appearing.Use the Right Placeholder for the Context: Placeholders are specific to the notification's context. For example, placeholders like
::WORKFLOWASSIGNEEFIRSTNAME::will only populate data when the notification is triggered from a workflow.Placeholders in Test Emails: When you use the "Send Test Email" function, placeholders will not be filled with sample data; they will appear as written (e.g., "::FIRSTNAME::"). The data will only populate when a real event triggers the notification.
2. Fixing Logos and Branding
If your company logo appears distorted, cut in half, or repeated in notification emails, it is likely due to an incorrect theme setup.
How to Fix Your Logo:
1. Navigate to Administration → General → Themes.
2. Find your active theme, click the dropdown, and select Design.
3. In the design settings, you will see fields for Full Logo and Notification Banner Image. For the Full Logo, the recommended dimensions are 350 x 100 px.
4. To fix formatting issues, you should use only one of these fields. Delete the image from the Notification Banner Image field and ensure the Full Logo is uploaded correctly. This usually resolves the issue.
Understanding Unexpected Notifications
Sometimes notifications are triggered when you don't expect them.
Reminders for Old Tasks: A manager might complete a task from a workflow that was assigned months or even years ago. This action will trigger the next step in that workflow, causing a new, unexpected notification to be sent for a very old onboarding process.
Emails Sent to Terminated Employees: An active employee may have reminder notifications queued up in the system. If they are terminated, those already-queued notifications may still be sent out shortly after their deactivation.
Duplicate Notifications: If users are receiving duplicate emails, check your settings in Administration → General → Notifications. It's possible that a copy of a standard notification has been created and activated, causing two emails to be sent for the same event.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are my email notifications delayed or being sent outside of business hours (e.g., in the middle of the night)? +
Notification delivery times can be affected by a few factors:
Notification Schedule: Your system may have a notification schedule in place that dictates when emails are sent. For instance, if the schedule is set from 9 am to 5 pm, any notifications triggered outside these hours will be queued and sent the next day. You can configure this schedule by navigating to Administration → General → Notifications → Settings.
System Queue: Standard email notifications, such as those in a workflow, are placed in a queue and processed at scheduled intervals (e.g., every 10 minutes). This can result in a short delay compared to "instant" notifications like password resets.
High Volume: If a large number of notifications are triggered at once (e.g., during a bulk course enrolment), it can take a few hours for the system to process and send all of them as they are released in batches. In several instances, a system-wide issue caused a backlog of notifications, which were resolved by the development team.
Some of my users are not receiving emails from ELMO, or the emails are going to spam. What should I do? +
If emails are being sent from ELMO (which can be verified in Administration → General → Notification History) but not received by users, the issue often lies with the recipient's email provider or your organization's internal network settings. Here are the recommended steps:
1. Ask the user to check their spam or junk folders.
2. Contact your internal IT team to ensure that ELMO's IP addresses (54.240.30.12 and 54.240.30.13) and our mail server domain (amazonses.com) are whitelisted and not being blocked by firewalls or other security measures.
3. If issues persist, your IT team may need to set up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to properly authenticate emails from ELMO. This requires raising a support ticket to get the necessary CNAME records to add to your DNS provider.
Our emails from ELMO are being marked as spam or are bouncing back with DMARC verification errors. How can this be fixed? +
This typically indicates an email authentication issue. To resolve this, your organization needs to set up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) for your domain. You will need to raise a support ticket to receive the required CNAME records, which your IT team must then publish to your domain's DNS provider. This verifies that emails sent from ELMO on your behalf are legitimate and improves deliverability. In some cases, a custom mailfrom domain may also need to be configured by the support team.
An employee was terminated and their profile is inactive, but they are still receiving notification reminders. Why is this happening? +
This can occur if the notification was scheduled or queued before the user's profile was deactivated. For example, if a course reminder is set to send 7 days after the due date, and the user is deactivated after that reminder is already in the system's queue, the email may still be sent. In one case, a user's account was still active when the notification was sent because their expiry date was set for a future date, even though a termination was processed earlier.
How do I change the logo that appears in email notifications? I am seeing a distorted or incorrect logo. +
Your notification logo is controlled by your theme settings. Navigate to Administration → General → Themes, select your theme, and click Design. In the design settings:
You can upload a 'Full Logo' which appears on the left side of the notification header.
You can also upload a 'Notification Banner image'.
Important: You should only use one of these options, not both. Uploading both a 'Full Logo' and a 'Notification Banner image' can cause formatting issues like repeated or overlapping logos. To fix this, delete the image from the 'Notification Banner Image' field. Inconsistent image sizes can often be resolved by ensuring the images have the same dimensions before uploading.
Placeholders in my notifications (e.g., ::MANAGERLASTNAME::) are not working. Why? +
This is usually due to one of two reasons:
1. Incorrect Formatting: The placeholder may be typed incorrectly. A common error is missing the colons at the beginning or end (e.g., ::MANAGERLASTNAME:: requires two colons on each side). Another issue is unnecessarily making a placeholder a hyperlink; the placeholder code itself generates the link and should be left as plain text.
2. Incorrect Context: The placeholder you are using may not be available for that specific notification or template type. For example, ::SYSTEM_LINK:: and ::COMPANY_NAME:: placeholders are available in general notifications but not in Email Templates within workflows. Similarly, there are no separate placeholders for 'Legal Name' and 'Preferred Name'; the system uses standard name placeholders, which may pull the preferred name in certain HR Core notifications only. It is not currently possible to create placeholders from custom user fields.
Why do my notification links not work in the new version of Outlook but work in the web version? +
This is a known issue related to the security and safety features of the new Outlook application, which can sometimes prevent hyperlinks from being clickable. This is not an ELMO system issue. You can either reach out to your internal IT team for assistance with Outlook settings or manually create the hyperlink within the ELMO notification editor as a workaround.
How can I change who receives a specific notification or stop certain users from receiving them? +
Global Notifications: For general system notifications, navigate to Administration → General → Notifications. Search for the template you wish to edit and update the recipient list in the 'To', 'CC', or 'BCC' fields.
Group-Based Notifications: If a notification is sent to a group, you must edit the members of that group under Administration → General → Groups.
Specific Users: You cannot exclude a single active user (e.g., someone on long-term leave) from receiving all notifications.
Terminated Users: To stop a terminated employee from receiving notifications, ensure their profile is deactivated. If their profile was active when a notification was queued, they may still receive it.
Admins: To change which admins receive notifications, you may need to adjust their user role from 'Company Admin' to a different role, as some notifications are hard-coded to send to all admins.
Why was an unexpected notification triggered for an employee? +
This can happen for several reasons:
Workflow Progression: A task or notification in a workflow is often triggered by the completion of a previous step. A manager completing a task for a new hire can trigger the next notification in the sequence, sometimes long after the employee has started.
Accidental Assignment: An admin may have manually assigned a form or course to a user in error. Unfortunately, there is no system log to track who manually assigned an item.
Changes to Workflows/Forms: Clicking "Update Form Instances" after editing a form can re-trigger 'Form Due' notifications for all users with outstanding assignments. Similarly, adding a new step to a workflow and using the "Execute Workflow" button can assign new tasks to existing users.
Reactivated Profiles: An inactive user profile may have been reactivated, causing them to be included in an assignment rule or workflow again.
How do I properly activate a new user so they receive the welcome email? +
When creating a new user, you must use the 'Notify User' option. This both activates their profile and sends the "New User is Added to the System" email with their login instructions. If you use the 'Activate' option, the user's profile becomes active, but no notification is sent, and you cannot send one later. In that case, you must provide login details to the user manually and they will need to use the 'Forgot Password' link to access their account.
How can I set up automated birthday or work anniversary reminders? +
This functionality is only available through the Rewards & Recognition module, which allows you to set up "Trophies" that are automatically awarded on a user's birthday or work anniversary, triggering a notification to the user and their manager. Without this module, the only workaround is to create a scheduled custom report that lists upcoming birthdays or anniversaries and have it sent to managers.
How do I set up notifications for contract or user expiry dates? +
The system has a built-in 'User Expiry' notification trigger. You can create multiple notifications based on this trigger to send reminders at different intervals (e.g., 6 months, 3 months, 1 week before expiry). You can set this up under Administration → General → Notifications → Add Notification and select the 'User Expiry' trigger. These notifications are based on the 'Expiry Date' field in a user's profile, not the 'End Date' field. There is no notification trigger for a contract's end date specifically.
Can I temporarily disable all notifications for bulk actions? +
No, there is no central switch to disable all system notifications. Notifications must be deactivated individually (e.g., at the global level, course level, form level). If you deactivate a notification, perform a bulk enrolment, and then reactivate it, the notification will not be sent retroactively for the enrolments that occurred while it was off; it will only apply to new enrolments going forward.