Performance alerts are instantaneous notifications from Smartabase to a member of your organization to let them know that something relevant to them has changed in the Smartabase environment. A performance alert is triggered when someone saves an event form that has been set up with an alert condition. This feature is typically used to notify professionals that someone has saved an event form logging the occurrence of an injury, sickness or personal best.
Performance alerts can be set up using the Performance alert management tool in Smartabase Online if you have the appropriate permissions, or by an administrator. You can set up alerts for individuals, groups or personal groups and send them to individuals or groups. An alert is only sent to people who have access to the event form that triggered the alert and access to the person the alert is about.
Performance alerts are triggered when someone saves a record or a record is created by a Smart flow or Smart save. Alerts don't get sent when records are saved via a resave or when linked fields are updated.
If you’re a Smartabase administrator, you may want to read the corresponding article about the performance alert management tool for site administrators.
This article explains how to:
Creating a performance alert
When setting up a performance alert, you need to set the following properties:
- The name of a performance alert. This is how the alert will appear in your list of activated alerts and is also included in the information sent to the alert's recipient.
Performance alerts are processed by a third party, so please be mindful of avoiding the inclusion of any personally identifiable information in the alert name.
- The alert criteria.
- The notification criteria.
- The message content. Since the alert criteria aren't visible to the recipient, it's helpful if you provide a message explaining why they're receiving the alert and what action to take next.
- The communication preferences.
Alert criteria
You can set alert criteria on a performance alert so that the alert fires when an event form is entered or updated (e.g. an injury record) or when specific criteria are met within the event form (e.g. an injury record is marked as resolved). Another example of a performance alert condition being met might be when an athlete has achieved 100% of their data entry for the last week. If applying multiple conditions, you can choose to match all (e.g. when the injury status is available and it is unresolved) or match any (e.g. when the injury status is available or it is unresolved) of the alert conditions. To fire an alert regardless of what information is entered into the actual entry, select the no alert criteria option from the drop-down menu.
Notification criteria
In addition to setting alert criteria, you can also choose whether the alert should be sent every time the record is edited or only when certain conditions are met by selecting one of the notification criteria options listed below.
All updates: If your performance alert criteria is set to all updates, an alert will be sent each time a record is edited and saved for the monitored athletes or groups which meets the criteria you’ve set (if any). This includes the first time a record is saved after its creation and any subsequent saves. If no changes were recorded in the form, the performance alert will not be sent.
Changes only: Using the changes only setting means that an alert will only be sent when the data entered in the record is changed. No alert will be sent when the record is initially created or if the record is saved with no changes made within it.
First save only: This setting prompts the sending of a performance alert when a record is first saved (and meets the performance alert criteria, if any were set). No alert will be sent for subsequent saves, even if the data within the record is changed.
Changed from: Using the changed from setting means you must first specify one or more alert criteria (1) and then specify a second set of criteria (2) which will be what the record is changed to (1), from (2). For example, if you were to set the alert criteria to Overall Performance = 5 and the changed from criteria to Overall Performance = 1, an alert would be triggered when an athlete’s record previously saved with a value of 1 is saved again with the same field changed to a value of 5.
Changes after first save: This setting is, for most intents and purposes, identical to the changes only notification criteria. The only difference is when a form has a Save as draft button enabled. When a form is saved as a draft, then saved as a complete record no alert is sent when the performance alert has the changes after first save setting enabled; however, the changes only setting will prompt an alert in this scenario.
Communication methods
You can use any of the following communication methods when setting up a performance alert:
- Internal only: the alert message will only appear in the recipient’s Smartabase inbox.
- Email: the alert message will be sent to the email address associated with the recipient’s Smartabase account.
- SMS (text message): the alert message will be sent to the mobile phone number associated with the recipient’s Smartabase account.
- Email and text message: the alert message will be sent to the email address and mobile phone number associated with the recipient’s Smartabase account.
- App notification: the alert message will appear as a push notification if the recipient has the Smartabase Athlete app installed.
- Email and app notification: your alert message will appear as a push notification if the recipient has the Smartabase Athlete app installed and will be sent to the email address associated with the recipient’s Smartabase account.
Please note that the message cannot be larger than 120 characters if you are sending it via text message. If it is longer than 120 characters, the message will be cut off after it reaches the character limit.
A critical consideration for setting up performance alerts which get sent out to someone’s email addresses is whether or not the content and frequency of performance alerts will cause these emails to be marked as spam by the receiver and/or blacklisted by the user’s email service.
Purely factual messages that contain accurate information about who authorized the sending of the message and how to contact them (such as performance alerts and daily reminders) are generally exempt from spam legislation; however, email service providers may have their own rules to define what is considered spam and what is not. Some email service providers, such as Gmail, allow people to mark emails as spam. The consequence of sending unnecessary or unwanted performance alerts to members of your organization may be that these emails get marked as spam and future alerts don't get seen, so always take necessity into account when setting up performance alerts.
Additional performance alert settings
You can also apply other settings to the performance alert:
- Choose to send a PDF of the event form record that triggered the alert. An attachment is only sent if the communication preference is email or internal message. If this contains sensitive information, carefully consider whether it should be included as a PDF attachment.
- Choose to additionally send the alert to the person’s Smartabase inbox by ticking the Add to inbox option.
- Choose to add the alert to activated alerts which will show you which alerts have been triggered and allow you to action them.
- Append with players details will include the athlete’s contact number and email address in the performance alert. You can use this when you want the person receiving the alert to easily make contact with the monitored athlete if required. A performance alert notification always contains the athlete’s name.
- Choose to include a direct link to the event form record that triggered the alert in the notification. Navigating to the link will open the record in Smartabase Online.
Steps to create a performance alert
- Log in to Smartabase to view your home page.
- Select the Performance Alerts tool.
- Choose Setup Performance Alerts to view your existing alert settings.
- Choose Create new Performance Alert.
- Choose a name for the performance alert. Avoid including any personally identifiable information in the alert name.
- Specify the alert criteria by selecting the event form the alert will apply to and what condition or conditions within the event form must be met. Specify whether all or any of the criteria must be met for the alert to be triggered.
- Choose the appropriate notification criteria.
- Add the performance alert message which the recipient will see when the alert is triggered.
- Choose the communication preferences.
- Choose whether you would like to:
- Send a PDF attachment of the record that triggered alert.
- Add the alert to the recipient’s Smartabase inbox.
- Add the alert to the activated alert list.
- Append the alert with the athlete’s details (contact number and email address).
- Include a direct link to the record that triggered the performance alert.
- Click Save.
- Add the users or groups you want to monitor using this performance alert in the monitored athletes or monitored groups sections.
- Add the users you want to be notified when one of the monitored users triggers the performance alert in the notified users section.
- Note that the monitored and notified users can be the same person or people.
- Save your completed performance alert.
If you add people to the notified users list who do not have access to the athlete or event form, they will not receive the performance alert.
Responding to a performance alert
When you receive a performance alert via email, text message, app notification or your Smartabase inbox, you should review the message to find out whether you need to take any action.
If the performance alert has been set up as an activated alert, it will be shown when you open the performance alert management tool and in the performance history. You can interact with activated alerts by entering a review comment or selecting the tick box to indicate that the alert has been reviewed. Use the save button after making any changes.
You can delete activated alerts individually using the delete icon next to the alert or by selecting the Delete all option from the Options drop-down menu, which will clear all activated alerts.
Managing performance alerts
Use the Performance alert management tool on Smartabase Online to view which performance alerts you receive, configure new performance alerts and review any activated alerts.
If you want to view, edit or create new performance alerts and you have activated alerts, select the Setup performance alerts option from the Options drop-down menu. If you do not have any activated alerts, click the Setup performance alerts button.
If you are the owner of the alert, you can edit, delete and duplicate your performance alerts by selecting the relevant button next to the performance alert. You can also view or edit it by clicking on the name of the alert. If you are not the owner of the alert, the details of any performance alerts that apply to you, including the alert name and criteria, will be shown.
If there are many alerts and you can’t easily see the one you need, you can use the search menu to filter for a specific alert. Alternatively, if you want to find all alerts associated with a particular athlete or group, you can use the search menu to see which alerts have been set up for people. When you need to know exactly which alerts have been based on a specific event form, you can search by form as well.
The search menu lets you search for:
- The Name of a performance alert (i.e. what you saved it as).
- The Message contents, which is helpful when you know all or part of the message that’s being received by someone in the alert.
- Send PDF if a PDF attachment of the event form is sent out with the performance alert (email and internal message only).
- Add to inbox can be selected to narrow down the alerts that are set to send to a Smartabase inbox.
- Add to activated alerts will show you which alerts have had this property enabled.
- Append with players details will show you which alerts have had this property enabled.
- The Owner, or the person who created the alert.
- The Athlete who is monitored by an alert.
- The Group of athletes monitored by an alert.
- The Form (event form) that the alert is based upon.
The monitored users, monitored groups and notified users that you see listed in an alert will depend on the group that you currently have loaded. If the alert also applies to athletes and coaches outside the currently loaded group, these people and groups will not be shown. A Smartabase administrator can view a full list of people receiving and being monitored by the alert in the Performance alert management tool for administrators.