Ideas for email alerts that tell the right person to act

An email alert sends a report to someone the moment it comes in from the field, with its photos, place and time. The recipient opens it through a link and does not need a Venzeo™ login. Without alerts, the office reads every report and forwards the right ones by hand, often hours later.

Alerts start from tags (previously called types): a new report with an alerted tag sends the email. Changing a report’s status, adding a comment or adding a tag to an existing report sends nothing. So every idea in this article starts with a tag that the reporter picks in the mobile app.

Send each problem to the person who fixes it

Alert the person who acts on the problem, not a general mailbox that nobody owns. See Activating an email alert notification.

• Damaged vehicle to your workshop, so the repair is booked the same day.
• Broken bin to the bin supplier, and Damaged road sign to the road maintenance contractor.
• Customer complaint or Customer not at home to customer service, so they can call the customer back.
• Safety hazard or Injury to your health and safety officer.

Let accounting invoice the same day

Give drivers a tag that marks the job as done, such as Delivered or Job completed, and alert your accountant on it. The accountant gets the proof of delivery with photos, time and GPS position, and can invoice without asking the driver. See Adding and editing tags (types) for reports.

Use a tag here, not a status: changing a status sends no alert.

Keep people outside your company informed

Alerts work for any email address, so a customer, a facility manager or a subcontractor can get the reports that concern them, without a user account. Get their consent first. If an outside address does not receive the alerts, see Alert emails aren’t arriving.

Keep alerts few enough to be read

Every alerted tag sends its own email. When people get alerts they never act on, they stop reading all of them. How to name action tags and limit alerts to them is in Setting up tags so reports reach the right team, together with a customer example.

• Before you upload reports from a CSV file, remember that each new report with an alerted tag sends an email.
• Check No. of notifications sent in last 30 days on the Notifications and Alerts page. When the total grows far beyond what your teams handle, review which tags really need an alert.

A starting set of alerts

Tag	Who gets the alert	What they do
Damaged vehicle	Workshop	Book the repair
Delivered	Accountant	Send the invoice
Customer complaint	Customer service	Call the customer back
Safety hazard	Health and safety officer	Close the area, check the site
Overflowing container	Dispatcher	Send an extra collection