About this document

Several users have criticized CMFNotification for being too complicated to set up. That is a fact; the author is well aware of that and the available documentation (shipped with the product), though comprehensive, aims administrators/developers to deploy any configuration (and possibly complex ones).

Hopefully, CMFNotification can be set up to provide simple, standard notification features, and you do not have to read the aforementioned documentation to enable them. (Though you should: see Further reading below for more information.)

The executive configuration (a.k.a. how to please your boss in 2 minutes)

There a few steps which are inevitable when it comes to installing a new product in a Plone site :

1. Read the right documentation if you have never installed any product before.
2. Install CMFNotification in the file system (as usual).
3. Install the product in the Plone portal of your choice (with Portal Quick Installer, as usual).

Now you have installed CMFNotification in your portal. However, nothing happens, by default. You have to configure it. Since this is the executive how-to, blindly follow these steps:

1. Go to the control panel (by clicking on the site setup link) and then click on "Configuration of CMFNotification".

2. By default, nothing is enabled. If you want to allow authenticated users to subscribe to items, check the first box (Enable extra subscriptions).

3. Check the following boxes: Enable item creation notification, Enable item modification notification and Enable workflow transition notification.

4. In Rules on item creation (users), Rules on item modification (users) and Rules on workflow transition (users) text areas, add the line:

   * :: *
   

5. In Rules on item creation (mail template), add the line:

   * :: string:creation_mail_notification
   

6. In Rules on item modification (mail template), add the line:

   * :: string:modification_mail_notification
   

7. Rules on workflow transition (mail template), add the line:

   * :: string:workflow_mail_notification
   

8. Click on the Save changes button.

CMFNotification is now configured to send e-mail notification when an item is created or modified and when a workflow transition happens on an item.

You can now test it by creating an user (if needed) and adding a new item.

Troubleshooting

If you do not receive any e-mail, read How to trouble shoot your configuration.

Further reading

This brief how-to explained how to set up a simple, standard configuration for CMFNotification. But this product can do a lot more. It is based on rules. These rules let you precisely define who to notify and which mail template to use on any supported event. To know more about the syntax of these rules, it is highly suggested that you read the rest of the documentation.