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 requests, and openings. 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, opening, and approval request detail page. Clicking Comments displays the conversations for that record. Users who can add comments will also see a comment form.

Creating a comment

To create a comment, navigate to the Comments page on a position, employee, approval request, or opening 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 in 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

Viewing comments and adding comments may require different permissions:

Record type View comments Add or reply to comments
Positions View positions Update positions
Employees View employees View employees
Approval requests View position requests View position requests
Openings View opening View opening

Users without view access will not see the Comments tab or button. Users without add access can view existing comments but cannot post new comments or replies. For more information about configuring access, 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 in 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 in 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 in each recipient's Dashboard. This option is limited to users with the required organization-management access.

  • Attachments: Attach files for recipients to download.

Dashboard messages

Messages with Show on dashboard enabled appear as cards in 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 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 required organization-management access 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 required organization-management access may permanently delete a sent message.

Message access

All active organization users can create and send ordinary messages. Organization-wide Dashboard messaging and organization-level message administration require elevated organization-management access.

Email notifications

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

Your organization's administrators can also configure email behavior, including reminder frequency and reminder spacing, 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. Audit history shows the email type, recipient, and a delivery outcome such as "Sent," "Not sent: recipient opted out," or a permanent delivery failure. This gives users and administrators enough detail to understand what happened without showing unnecessary delivery details.

The following delivery statuses may appear in audit history:

Status What it means
Sent The email was accepted for delivery.
Not sent: no email address The recipient does not have an email address on their account.
Not sent: email not verified The recipient's email address has not been verified.
Not sent: recipient opted out The recipient has opted out of this type of email notification.
Not sent: email domain not allowed The recipient's exact email domain does not match the organization's allowed domains.
Not sent: organization email required The recipient does not have an email address assigned for this organization.
Not sent: previous hard bounce A previous email to this address had a permanent delivery failure, so no further emails are sent to this address.
Delivery failed: hard bounce The email was permanently rejected after send. 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 FTE Tree was unable to deliver the email after multiple attempts. This can happen because of temporary mail delivery issues.

Understanding bounces

A Hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure. The email address may not exist, the domain may be invalid, or the receiving mail system may permanently refuse 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 temporary mail delivery issue. FTE Tree automatically retries delivery. If all retry attempts fail, the status is recorded as "Delivery failed."

If you see a "Not sent: previous hard bounce" or "Delivery failed: 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.