Introduction

FTE Tree provides several ways to communicate with your organization's users. Use comments for discussions on specific records, messages for announcements and notifications, and email alerts for important events.

Comments and Conversations

FTE Tree allows your users to have conversations directly on positions, employees, approval workflows, and requisitions. Comments provide a place to discuss, ask questions, and collaborate without leaving the record you are working on.

Where to Find Comments

A Comments tab or button is available on each position, employee, requisition, and approval workflow detail page. Clicking Comments displays all conversations for that record and provides a form to add a new comment.

Creating a Comment

To create a comment, navigate to the Comments page on a position, employee, approval workflow, or requisition and enter your text in the comment form. Comments support up to 5,000 characters. After submitting, your comment will appear at the top of the conversation list along with your name and a timestamp.

Threaded Replies

Each top-level comment supports a single level of threaded replies. To reply to a comment, click the Reply button beneath it and enter your response. Replies are displayed indented beneath the original comment, making it easy to follow the conversation.

When someone replies to your comment, you will receive both an email notification and an in-app notification alerting you of the reply. Self-replies do not generate notifications.

Mentioning Users

When creating a comment or reply, you can mention other users in your organization using the Mention Users field. Start typing a name and select from the list of available users. Mentioned users will receive both an email notification and an in-app notification on their dashboard, alerting them that they were mentioned. Users who mention themselves will not receive a notification.

You can manage your email notification preferences for comment mentions and replies through your user profile.

Mentions Tab

The Messages page includes a Mentions tab that displays all notifications related to comment mentions and replies in one place. This makes it easy to find and respond to conversations where you have been mentioned or where someone has replied to your comments.

Comment Permissions

The following permissions are required to comment on each type of record:

  • Positions: Position update permission
  • Employees: Employee update permission
  • Approval Workflows: Approval request settings permission
  • Requisitions: Requisition update permission

Users without the required permission will not see the Comments tab or button. For more information about configuring permissions, see Permissions and Roles.

Comments vs. Audit Event Notes

Comments are standalone conversations for collaboration and discussion. They are separate from the audit event notes that are attached to data changes. Audit event notes explain why a specific change was made and are tied to the change history, while comments are ongoing conversations about a record.

Messages

Messages allow you to communicate directly with users in your organization. You can send messages to individual users or broadcast to the entire organization. Messages with the Show on Dashboard option enabled will appear on each recipient's dashboard for increased visibility.

Creating a Message

To create a message, navigate to the Messages page and click Create Message. The following fields are available:

  • Subject: The subject line displayed in the message list and on the dashboard.

  • Message: The message body content. This is optional.

  • Send to Entire Organization: Enable this to send the message to all users in your organization. When disabled, select individual recipients using the Recipients field.

  • Recipients - Users: Select one or more users to receive the message. This field is disabled when sending to the entire organization.

  • Acknowledgement Required: When enabled, recipients must explicitly acknowledge the message before it can be archived. You may optionally set a custom acknowledgement button label (defaults to "Archive").

  • Show on Dashboard: When enabled, the message will appear on each recipient's dashboard. This option requires the Message Admin permission.

  • Attachments: Attach files for recipients to download.

Dashboard Messages

Messages with Show on Dashboard enabled appear as cards on the recipient's dashboard. Each card displays the subject, sender, timestamp, message body, and any attachments.

Recipients can archive dashboard messages to remove them from their dashboard. If a message requires acknowledgement, the recipient must acknowledge it first. Archived messages can be restored at any time from the Messages page.

Managing Messages

The Messages page organizes messages into the following tabs:

  • Active: Unarchived messages you have received.

  • Archived: Messages you have archived.

  • All: All messages you have received.

  • Mentions: Notifications from comment mentions and replies.

  • Sent: Messages you have sent. Users with the Message Admin permission can view all sent messages in the organization.

Messages are marked as read when viewed. The sender of a message or a user with the Message Admin permission may permanently delete a sent message.

Message Permissions

All users can create and send messages. The Message Admin permission is required to enable the Show on Dashboard option and to view or delete messages sent by other users.

Email Notifications

FTE Tree sends email notifications for important events such as approval requests, comment mentions, invitation reminders, and system alerts. Users can manage their email notification preferences through their user profile.

Your organization's administrators can also configure email behavior, including reminder frequency and back-off intervals, through the approval settings and organization user settings.

Email Delivery Status

Email notification events appear in audit history pages alongside the actions that triggered them. This allows users and administrators to verify whether notifications were delivered and understand why an email may not have been sent.

The following delivery statuses may appear in audit history:

Status What It Means
Sent The email was successfully delivered to the recipient's email provider.
Email Address Not Available The recipient does not have an email address on their account.
Email Not Verified The recipient's email address has not been verified.
User Preference The recipient has opted out of this type of email notification.
Invalid Email Domain The recipient's exact email domain does not match the organization's allowed domains.
No Email for Organization The recipient does not have an email address assigned for this organization.
Prior Hard Bounce A previous email to this address permanently failed (hard bounce), so no further emails are sent to this address.
Hard Bounce The email was rejected by the recipient's email provider. This usually means the email address does not exist or the domain is not accepting mail. No further emails will be sent to this address.
Delivery Failed The system was unable to deliver the email after multiple attempts. This can happen due to temporary issues with the recipient's email provider.

Understanding Bounces

A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure. The email address does not exist, the domain is invalid, or the recipient's server permanently refused delivery. Once an address hard bounces, no further emails will be sent to it.

A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure, such as a full mailbox or a temporarily unavailable server. The system automatically retries delivery. If all retry attempts fail, the status is recorded as "Delivery Failed."

If you see a "Prior Hard Bounce" or "Hard Bounce" status, the affected user should update their email address in their user profile to resume receiving notifications.

Need Help?

If you have questions about messaging or notifications, please contact us or email us at support@ftetree.com.