Terminology

rap-X assigns specfic meanings to a number of general terms. These meanings are described below.

Items

" Items" in rap-X include:

• Requests
• News Items
• Proposals

All items share some common functionality:

1. Items belong with a specific Category
2. A user is defined as the Item Author
3. The item has a lifecycle which involves passing through different statuses.
4. Visibility - the visibility of all items is determined by Status, Category and Public/Private status
5. Actions peformed on an item generates an Event
6. A WatchList of users monitoring the item is maintained against the event
7. Comments can be added against the item

Events

An Event in rap-X is created when the system records some noteworth activity. Usually this will reflect an action taken by a user such as logging in, creating a request, closing a request, creating a user account, etc etc.

All events are recorded in the Event Log, which can be viewed by Supplier Users from Manage->Event Log.

A background task in rap-X processes all new records in the Event Log according to rules defined in the NotificationMappingFile .

Notifications

By default, rap-X is configured with a set of Event Processors which send notification messages to users who are watching a given Item, i.e. the members of the WatchList for that Item. Users can watch an item at different levels of sensitivity WatchLevel?.

When an Event is processed by rap-X, a Notification Event Handler performs the following steps:

1. Fetch a list of users who are watching the Item which triggered the event
2. Filter this list by WatchLevel?
3. Construct and send a personalised email to each Watcher

Users can edit their own NotificationSettings? by Category[Categories? and by WatchLevel?.

By default, new users are set to "No Watch" for all item types and all categories. This is to prevent spamming people unecessarily. If a "DefaultUserProfile" has been set for an Organisation,? then the Notification Settings for that profile are inherited by all new users added to the Organisation.

Requests in rap-X

Requests in rap-X can represent:

• Request for Service - a task
• Problem Report - e.g. a bug report for a software company
• Feature Request
• Request for Information - an enquiry

The visibility of a request - ie which users can see it, is dicated by whether it is public or private, and on the permissions effective on the category in which the request belongs.

Requests, like all rap-X items can be "watched?", which means that users will receive notifications of events affecting the request.

Associated with request is a Watch List - which is a list of users who are watching the request. The watch list can be viewed by members of the Support Organisation?

Requests can re-labelled - e.g. "Issues", "Tickets", "Bugs", "Jobs".