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Callista caters for five primary forms of communication (referred to as Communication Items) to be sent to students:
Prior to creating a Communication Item (CORW2000) it is first necessary to configure the system and set up a Template (CORW0500) that will be merged with data from the database to form a Communication Item. The following must be configured:
The following must be defined:
Correspondence Templates are defined in the Correspondence Template page - CORW0500. Here the user determines the Delivery and Content Type of the communication, as well as all other information (for example, for an email a user would also specify the subject, cc, bcc, etc.) and whether the item needs to be approved before being sent.
To allow data from the Callista database to be drawn into Communication Items, Substitution Tags must also be defined. These take the form of database SQL queries which return data from the database. Substitution Tags are defined in CORW0400 (accessed via CORW0500). Images to be included in Communication Items are also defined by Substitution Tags - also defined in CORW0400 (accessed via CORW0500). These SQL and image tags are inserted into the Template as part of the content.
Communication Templates and Substitution Tags can also be catalogued by placing them in defined Communication Categories. For example, templates and tags used in Enrolment can be grouped into an Enrolment category. This makes them more readily accessed during Communication processing. This is done in CORW0600 (accessed via CORW0500).
Correspondence Type Groups, defined in CORW2690 (accessed via CORW0500), allow a user to set up a group of similar email templates to be sent as a single email, with the body of each message concatenated together into a single item.
An autonomous process is responsible for the processing (combining Template with data) of Communication types (Templates) to generate Communication Items. Each item represents a piece of correspondence with a single recipient.
The Processing of Correspondence Templates involves the execution of SQL queries behind substitution variables, the parsing of the template, the insertion of data into the template and the creation of the final communication item.
Correspondence Types can be defined such that items can be generated when certain events occur. Communication Triggers (see CORW4000) are events (on an insert/update/delete event in the database) that can generate Communication Items.
A number of Callista tables have System Communication Triggers associated with them, for which conditions can be defined that will trigger the generation of correspondence.
See the Communication Trigger Registry for a list of these tables and their system triggers.
Multiple Communication Types can be recorded against the same system trigger to allow for catered communication to be sent out on specific events (i.e. a student is enrolled into a course – new record is inserted into STUDENT_COURSE_ATTEMPT with a status of enrolled).
The Communication Register is a table in the database that holds a record of all Communication Items that have been sent through this system. This includes all items that were created, but were rejected on review by an authorized user. Users access this register via the Communication Items Wizard - CORW2000.
The wizard allows users to view past correspondence and re-send this if necessary. It also allows users to create ad-hoc Communication Items based on a Communication Template and the relevant contextual information (i.e. Person ID).
This wizard also allows users to view items that are awaiting review and either approve or reject them. The user can also force the system to send the item immediately instead of waiting for the CORJ5000 job to run.
Communication Items can be logically deleted by clicking on the Delete button in CORW2000. This sets a logical delete date against the Communication Item record. Alternatively, the CORJ5100 job can be run to delete the set of Communication Items defined by the job parameters, along with and any associated child records. Note that Communication items created via an encumbrance effect will not be deleted by this job. Communication Items for Pending Fee Encumbrances and Person Encumbrances will not be removed and an error will be written to the log.
In order to be able to review a communication item and mark it as Approved or Rejected. the user must have the Advanced Security Function COMI-RVW assigned to their user (via SECF0062) or assigned to their database role (via SECF0063). Database roles can be assigned to a user via SECF0021.
The Communication Template page (CORW0500) and the Communication Item page (CORW2000) are both secured by Organisational Unit security. This means that any user who has organisational unit restrictions enabled for them, (that is, they are restricted to a specific subset of org. units in SECF0032) will only be able to see Communication Types or items that were created from Communication Types, that are either unrestricted or which are restricted to the same set of org. units to which the user has access.
Similarly in other correspondence and communication functions (i.e. setting up categories) where the user can see Communication Types, they will only be able to see those types that are associated with organisational units to which they have access and Communication Types that are unrestricted.
There are also individual restrictions that can be applied to a security role for specific Communication Categories (CORW0600), via the 'Security Role Communication Category Restrictions' (SECF0073) page; for example, to restrict users with the context security role from creating, editing, deleting, approving and/or rejecting specific Communication Categories (CORW0600) and Items (CORW2000); and/or to restrict users with the context role from viewing, editing and/or deleting Communication Templates (CORW0500) and Tags.
In addition, the 'View-Only All Communication Categories' (VIEW-COMC) Advanced Security Function can be applied to a Security Role for all Communication Categories, by selecting the 'View Only All Communication Categories' check box in SECF0073 (or via SECF0063) in order to restrict users to ‘View Only’ access for all open Communication Categories. Applying VIEW-COMC via SECF0073 also automatically adds the 'Communications Template and Substitution Tag Create Restriction' (COM-TT-CR) Advanced Function to the security role which restricts users from creating Templates and Tags (CORW0500).
Communications pages utilise third party software in order to assist with the editing, display and creation of communication items.
For technical details relating to the function and configuration of this software refer to the following Callista Technical documents on the wiki for the latest Release:
If your institution uses a character set that contains multi-byte characters, please note that the use of multi-byte characters in Communications is partially supported by Callista in the following pages only:
Note: Callista also supports multi-byte characters in related functionality that uses these areas (listed above).
For more information, see the 'Character Sets' section in the System Wide Features Online Help page, and the technical documentation on the wiki.
Last Modified on 1 May, 2017 2:10 PM
History Information
| Release Version | Project | Change to Document |
| 20.0.0.0 | 2262 - Core Performance Enhancements (Communication Item Deletion) | Added section - Deleting Communication Items. |
| 18.0.0.0 | 2088 - Communications Security | Added information to the Security section regarding the new Communications Category restrictions. |
| 18.0.0.0 | 2094 - Character Sets | Added information about the use of multi-byte characters. |
| 17.0.0.2 | 2014 - PUSH Notifications | Added Event Notifications. Reformatted the document. |
| 16.1.0.2 | 1818 - Correspondence | Updates throughout document |
| 12.1.1.2 | 1580 - Correspondence | New Page |