This lesson will guide you through creating alerts and tags. Alerts will give your agency the ability to divert requests that you cannot fulfill, while tags will help you keep your requests organized.
This article will cover two sections:
Creating Alerts
How do I direct a requester to information already publicly available or outside of the portal?
You can set up alerts to display instructions based on a particular word or phrase that a requester types in their request. This can help route requesters to the information they’re looking for before they make their request, saving time for everyone. This information might be located on a page that is already on your website or the website for a department that processes public records requests outside of the NextRequest portal. Once an alert has been created, you can track how often it is triggered by requesters.
Watch the video or read on below for instructions on how to create alerts:
Creating an Alert
- Click the ADMIN link in the header
- Click the Alerts link in the sub-header
- Click the Create Alert button
- Enter the words and/or phrases in the Keywords box that you would like to trigger the alert, separated by a pipe: | (usually found on the same key as \ above the return key)
- Examples: to trigger an alert for the words “birth,” “death,” and “certificate”, enter ‘birth|death|certificate’. Try to use the singular or stem version of a word so that it will be triggered by different variations. For example if you want to have an alert triggered for the words 'license', 'licenses' and 'licensing', you can put in 'license' as the alert keyword.
- Enter text of the alert. This text will display below the request description if the associated keyword is detected
- Click the SAVE button
Editing an Alert
To edit an existing Alert, locate it in the Alerts list, then click the Edit icon (
) inline on the right. Make any edits you want to the Alert keyword(s) or text, then click the SAVE button.
Deactivating and Reactivating an Alert
To deactivate an existing Alert, locate it in the Alerts list, click the Deactivate button inline on the right, then click OK to confirm. Once an alert has been deactivated it will not longer be triggered when a requester types the keyword.
Creating Tags
You can use tags to categorize requests for easy filtering and reporting. Some common tags that agencies use are for tracking requests from the media, that need legal review, or requests that are particularly high priority. You can also use tags to track requests on popular topics, or related to programs within your agency. Once a tag has been created, it can be added to requests by any user.
Adding a Tag
- Click the ADMIN link in the header
- Click the Tags link in the sub-header
- Click the CREATE TAG button
- Enter a tag name and (optional) description
- Click the SAVE button
Editing a Tag
To edit an existing tag, locate it in the tags list, then click the Edit icon () to the right of the tag name. Make any updates that you want to the tag name and description, then click the SAVE button.
Deactivating and Reactivating Tags
To deactivate an existing tag, locate it in the tags list, click the deactivate button to the right of the tag name, then click OK to confirm. Deactivated tags will still appear on requests they’ve been added to, but cannot be added to any future requests after deactivation.
To reactivate a tag, go to the tag list and click the 'Show deactivated tags' toggled under the search box. Locate the tag in the list and click the Activate button next to it.