Alerts & Notifications is a flexible feature in REDCap to send notifications to staff and/or participants. It does not require a project or survey-level designated email field; it only requires that you are collecting the desired email address in an email validated text field somewhere in the project.
Jump to:
Overview
You can find Alerts & Notifications on your left-hand panel, under the "Applications" heading.
After navigating to this page, you will see a number of options available to you.
1. Feature description - Helpful information from the developers about how to use the feature.
2. My Alerts - This page will list all notifications that you have configured.
3. Notification Log - Navigate to this tab to view past or future scheduled notifications.
4. + Add New Alert - Select this to begin configuring a new notification.
5. Re-evaluate Alerts - Trigger a reevaluation of your alert logic - if you've made changes, this will check to see if any notifications need to be scheduled or unscheduled based on your changes.
6. Show deactivated alerts - Alerts cannot be deleted, only deactivated. By default, deactivated alerts are hidden for you. Check this box to show deactivated alerts.
7. Upload or download alerts - Download a csv file of all current alert settings. You can use these csvs to import alert settings from other projects.
Creating an alert
Begin by selecting + Add New Alert.
We recommend giving the alert a short but descriptive title.
Step 1: Triggering the Alert
When a record is saved on a specific form/survey
Use this option if your trigger should result from when a participant or data entry staff saves or submits a survey of your choice (set what survey and the condition in step 1B).
If conditional logic is TRUE when a record is saved on a specific form/survey
Use this option if you want the trigger to activate when a participant or data entry staff saves or submits a selected instrument, and the specified logic is also met (set what survey condition and logic in step 1B).
When conditional logic is TRUE during a data import, data entry, or as the result of time-based logic
Use this option if your trigger should result from when logic you specify is true when the interaction is coming from the data entry side, from a data import, or after some time condition becomes true as specified in your logic. Specify the logic that should trigger your notification in Step B.
B)
Options in Step 1B will change dynamically based on your selection at Step 1A. If you select either "conditional logic" option, then you will see the following checkbox in Step 1B.
Checking this box will ask the system to check whether the logic you have specified is still true for every record before sending the notification, just in case something in their data has changed since the notification was first scheduled.
Step 2: Set the Alert Schedule
In Step 2, you will configure the timing of your notification.
You can set the alert to send immediately after the logic from Step 1 has been met, after a specified period at a specific time of day, after a specific period of time, or at an exact date and time.
Then, you can set whether to send the notification more than once. If you would like it to send more than once, you can set it to send based on interactions with the form/survey set in Step 1 or a set number of times over some period.
If you would like to set a date that the notification to expire, even if notifications would have been sent based on the previously established logic, you can indicate that date in the final step of Step 2. Otherwise, you can leave it blank.
Step 3: Message Settings
In the final step, you will configure the message to be sent to participants.
If you are a Mosio or Twilio customer, and you have configured your account in your REDCap project, then you can also use Alerts & Notifications through SMS or Voice Call. If you are not a Mosio or Twilio customer, then you will only be able to select the Email alert type.
Select an email account from the dropdown list in the "Email From:" line. This will be a list of email addresses associated with the users in your REDCap project. You can add secondary and tertiary email addresses to your REDCap profile, which will also appear in this list. This might be useful if you have a shared study email inbox where you would like to receive responses. If you don't know where to edit your account profile, see How to Edit REDCap Profile.
In the recipient section, or "Email To:" line, you will be able to select from email addresses of users in the project (in the case you are configuring the notification to alert staff), or any email validated field in the project. You may also manually enter email addresses, if that is preferred.
Finally, configure the subject and body of the email you would like to send to the recipient. If the "Prevent piping of data for Identifier fields" item is checked, any piping (see: How to Use Piping) of fields that are marked as identifiers will be unsuccessful.
If you would like the notification to function similarly to Automated Survey Invitations, which routes the participant to complete a survey, you can use the Smart Variable [survey-link:instrument] (see: Smart Variables).
Warnings
CCs and BCCs
Alerts & Notifications has the added flexibility of including CCs and BCCs in your composed messages.
The warning below relates to a configuration in which you are using an email field as your main recipient in combination with CCs or BCCs. See below for an example.
Without the appropriate logic in Step 1: Triggering the Alert, this type of build can result in alerts sending to the CCs unexpectedly and will not be tracked in logging, making it a difficult issue to troubleshoot.
This issue will occur if the intended recipient email field is blank at the time the alert is triggered. The alert will initially fail, but it will eventually send to the other recipients (CCs/BCCs). Alerts that do not have CCs or BCCs do not face this same issue since there are no other recipients to alert. However, due to the initial failure to send the alert, the email to the CCs and BCCs is not logged in project logging.
To use this alert most effectively, please make sure that Step 1 includes logic that the intended recipient email field ([email] in the above screenshot) is not blank. See an example of such logic below:
[email]<>''
Updating alerts
It is not recommended that you modify an active alert that has already started sending for existing participants. Where possible, we would recommend that you configure a new alert. If you must modify an existing alert, please Re-evaluate Alerts.
To re-evaluate your alerts/notifications, return to the Alerts & Notifications page and select the Re-evaluate Alerts.
You will be met with the following pop-up:
At the bottom of the pop-up, you will see a list of your active alerts. If you select to "Re-evaluate selected alerts", the system will re-evaluate the logic for the notifications against each record to cancel or reschedule notifications as necessary.
You will also have an "Enable Test Run?" option. If you turn on this option, you can choose to re-evaluate your selected surveys without the system taking official action. After completing a test run, you will receive confirmation that no changes were made, along with a csv file of records that would have been affected.