Working Smarter With Intacct Smart Event Emails

• November 6, 2015
• Kathy Jastrzebski

 

Why work harder when you can work smarter (and more efficiently)?

If I had to come up with a slogan for Intacct Smart Events that would be it. Smart Event Emails automate emails that would usually be created manually. (You can even set them to notify you when certain things happen. For example if a new Sales Order comes over from the Sales Department).

So now that you’ve gotten a feel for writing Smart Rules and your whole world has probably changed (thanks Intacct for that cool little gem!) now is the perfect time to flip your world upside down again. If you thought Intacct Smart Rules were pretty cool just wait until you meet Smart Events! I like to think of Smart Events as taking the foundation of Smart Rules and rather than creating an Error or Warning, they trigger an Email, HTTP post, or API call.

So let me give a little background on how I stumbled upon these. The workflow of this particular company follows this work flow: the Sales Rep will first close a deal in SalesForce. They then sync the order to Intacct as a Sales Order into the queue. Once that happens, accounting edits the Sales Order and sets it up on a recurring order entry template with a revenue recognition schedule followed by an email sent to the Sales Rep to notify them their order was processed giving (also giving them a chance to review for any corrections). This email takes time, so I thought why not automate it?! Hello Smart Events!

Smart Events can be used to send emails when an event is Set (edited), Added, or Deleted. Take it a step further and you can specify conditions when to have the email sent.

Where are these Smart Events? (Navigation)

Customization Services > Smart Events Catalog > Add

Step 1: Choose object to extend

This step is the same as the Intacct Smart Rules Step 1. This says: where are we finding the information that will trigger the email to go out? In this example the Object is an Order Entry Transaction and the Document Type is a Sales Order. (I want the email to trigger when a Sales Order is edited).

Step 2: Select event properties

This is where we are going to select an Event and write our condition. This lets Intacct know under what circumstance to fire off the email.

Writing the condition:

I chose to have “Set” be the action that triggers the Smart Event Email (meaning anytime a transaction is edited). The Smart Rule I used as the trigger was: {!SODOCUMENT.STATE!}==”Converted”. Anytime the Sales Order’s State changes from Pending to Converted (meaning an invoice was created) the email will fire off.

Sales Reps are happy because no one is forgetting to email them and the accounting department is happy because it’s less work! Win win!

*If you set the Event to “Add” the email would trigger when a Sales Order is added to your queue (could be helpful!).

Step 3: Select email properties

This step allows us to change the following fields of the email that will be fired: Recipient, Subject, Body, and whether a PDF is attached.

You’re probably thinking “Wow! That’s a lot of Intacct Injection language!” Before you get overwhelmed let me explain what they are.

Email: This is where the recipient’s email will go. I want the email to go to the Sales Rep whose opportunity it is so I used the catalog to find the name of that object (SODOCUMENT) and field (SF_EMAIL). (This part was a little tricky at first – we had to make a custom field (SF_EMAIL) so when the order is synced from SalesForce it includes the sales rep’s email).

Subject: This is whatever you want the subject of the email to be. (It could be anything! “<your name here> is Awesome!” would be my first suggestion. You hold the power, might as well have the whole company thinking you’re awesome). I was boring however and chose to include the name of the Opportunity that was converted – I mean I guess that’s more practical. The injection: {!SODOCUMENT.PONUMBER!} (*a little note: if you’re like my company, and not a manufacturer you might not use PO’s. Intacct uses the opportunity name as the PO number. Kind of helpful hint there!)

Attach PDF: Check this if you want the email to include a copy of the Sales Order.

Body: What do you want to tell the recipient? Intacct Injections are really cool to use here because it includes in the email the details of the converted order. I liked that you can include a link to the SalesForce opportunity here. (https://na3.salesforce.com/{!SODOCUMENT.OPPORTUNITY_ID!} (cool tip, right?!)

Step 4: Select deployment options

Look at that you made it to the last step! All that’s left to do is to name your Smart Event. (Just like Smart Rules no spaces or special characters here).

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