• Setting the reminders schedule by dates
• Sending reminders manually
• Setting customized reminder schedules for program groups

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Setting Reminders by Application/Record Phase

To set the reminders schedule by phase, perform the following steps.

• Select the phase for which you want to send reminders; Pre-decision, Post-decision, While Abroad/On Program, or Returnee/Off Program.
• Choose the number of days, weeks, or months relative to the application cycle dates for which you are sending reminders.
• Choose the rate at which you want to repeat sending reminders.
• Click the Save Reminder Schedule button to save the setting.
• Click the Show Reminders Sample button to see an example of what a reminder email looks like. 

When do applicants/users stop getting reminder emails?

• Pre-decision - all pre-decision reminder emails will stop being sent after the deadline 
• Post-decision - all post-decision reminder emails will stop being sent after the start date of the program (if there is no start date, they will run until the end of the year of the app cycle - example: Summer 2018 post-decision reminders run until December 31, 2018 if there is no start date)
• While Abroad/On Program - all while abroad/on program reminder emails will stop being sent after the end date of the program
• Returnee/Off Program - all returnee/off program reminder emails will stop 3 months after the program end date. Note: Returnee reminder emails do not include testimonial questionnaires.

Sending Reminders Manually
For each phase, you have the 'Send Manually' option on the right corner of the Reminders home page. After clicking the Send Manually link you are alerted before the reminders are sent. Click Cancel, if you wish to stop the reminders from being sent or click OK to send the reminders manually, meaning outside of the standard schedule.

Verifying Reminder Emails Were Sent

An administrator (with maintenance permissions) can check under Maintenance > Sent Email to confirm that reminder emails have been sent. Select the date span in which you expect the emails to have been sent by clicking on the calendar icons and choosing the start and end date of the range.  Then press Go.
 
A list of all system-generated emails for that time frame will appear.  Search in the second column for the words 'Application Activity from System to Applicant.'   After locating one of these, click on the long ID number in the first column to the left of the words, and the text of the email that was sent will appear, thus confirming that the reminders task was executed.
 
If no emails of this type are listed for the time frame in which you expected them to appear, then the reminder emails were not sent and you will need to check under Maintenance > Task Scheduler to further investigate the error. Note: If you are a Hosted/SaaS client, you do not have permission to access the Task Scheduler area and you should submit a case if you suspect any problems.

Scheduling Program-Group Specific Customized Reminders
At the bottom of the Reminders home page, you can see a Program Groups panel with the Custom Reminder Schedule tab. Select a program group from the drop-down list box Select Program Group. The selected program appears in the list below.  A reminders schedule can then be set for the specific program group selected.

• You receive reports that the applicants that are being categorized as 'Abroad' on your site are not receiving the auto-reminder emails for the 'Abroad' process elements that are required.
  • This is due to the 'Abroad' phase reminder emails only being sent to the 'Committed' status applicants.  Applicants that are only in the 'Accepted' status (or status aliases) will not receive reminders for their 'Abroad' process elements due to the notification system not having confirmation that the applicant is participating in the program.
  • The applicants, if they are participating, will need to have their application's status changed from 'Accepted' to 'Committed' in order to receive these auto-notifications.  This will need to be done by an administrator as the commitment pane does not appear on the application page to the applicant once the program has begun.

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• If you are reviewing your email logs and believe that Reminders should be getting sent, but there are none logged in the email logs, here are the steps involved in finding out where the source of the issue might be. Note for Hosted and SaaS clients: Your administrators do not have the ability to access the Maintenance > Task Scheduler administrative tool - you should skip to step 4 in this process when troubleshooting reminders: 

1. Check the Maintenance > Task Scheduler page to make sure that the scheduled task for executing the _Reminders task and _RemindersDaemon each night has been configured. They should not be in the 'Missing Tasks' list. You should also click the 'edit' button for the task to review the URL that it is operating on - in most cases, this should match your site's URL. However, sometimes a site gets the wrong URL in this task if it was configured prior to a DNS switchover. 
2. On the Maintenance > Task Scheduler page, make sure that the server's IP address is listed in the IP Restriction List at the bottom of the page. If it isn't, the interface should provide you with the proper IP address to add. 
3. Check the 'raw' logs for the existing Reminders task to ensure that the task has been running and isn't resulting in an error. The previous execution of the task should have the logic used for each application in your account. Check the end of the log to ensure that it didn't result in an error (if an error occurred, provide the error output to Terra Dotta via a case).
4. Go to Process Admin > Reminders and verify that the Reminders are turned on for the phases of your process. Check both the 'default' schedule as well as all the program group schedules. Sometimes, the default schedule will have the Reminders activated, but the Reminders will still be deactivated for all the program groups. The program group deactivation will override the default settings. 
5. Find an application that should have received a Reminder to verify that it should have been sent. If you do find an application that should have been sent a Reminder - provide the application, program, and Reminders schedule information to Terra Dotta in a case to further diagnose the problem.

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• Review of the 'Sent Email' log reveals that reminder emails are not being sent according to the configured schedule. When reviewing the logs of the scheduled task for reminders, the following error is found:
   
  The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error. 
  Please contact the website administrator. 
  
  The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes. 
  
  Error Occurred While Processing Request 
  The request has exceeded the allowable time limit Tag: cffile 
  • This is due to the configuration of the ColdFusion service not being provided with a long enough timeout resulting the the process not completing.
  • To resolve this issue, advise your system admins to go into ColdFusion Administrator and set the Timeout to something very high (around 15000) on any Scheduled Tasks that are timing out.  
     
    The setting is done in ColdFusion Administrator under Debugging & Logging > Scheduled Tasks, on the edit screen of each task.

Reminders Video