Chapter 11. Using Automated Notifications
The Certificate System can be configured to send automatic email notifications to end users when certificates are issued or revoked or to an agent when a new request has arrived in the agent request queue. This chapter describes automated notifications and details how to enable, configure, and customize the notification email messages that are sent.
Note
Automated notifications are not to be confused with automated jobs. See Chapter 12, Setting Automated Jobs for more on this topic.
Note
Because of the types of notifications that can be sent, only Certificate Managers have the ability to be configured for notifications; this option is not available on the other subsystems.
11.1. About Automated Notifications for the CA
Automated notifications are email messages sent when a specified event occurs. The system uses listeners that monitor the system to determine when a particular event has occurred; when the event happens, then the system is triggered to send an email to the configured recipient. Each type of notification uses a template, either in plain text or HTML, to construct the notification message. The template contains text and tokens that are expanded to fill in the correct information for a particular event. The messages can be customized by changing the text and tokens contained in the templates. The HTML templates can also be customized for different appearances and formatting.
11.1.1. Types of Automated Notifications
There are three types of automated notifications:
- Certificate Issued.A notification message is automatically sent to users who have been issued certificates. A rejection message is sent to a user if the user's certificate request is rejected.
- Certificate Revocation.A notification message is automatically sent to users when the user certificate is revoked.
- Request in Queue.A notification message is automatically sent to one or more agents when a request enters the agent request queue, using the email addresses set for the agent. This notification type sends an email every time a message enters the queue. For more information about the request in queue job, see Section 12.1.2.2, “requestInQueueNotifier (RequestInQueueJob)”.There is also a job that sends a notification to agents about the status of the queue, which includes a summary of the queue status at certain intervals.
11.1.2. Determining End-Entity Email Addresses
The notification system determines the email address of an end entity by checking first the certificate request or revocation request, then the subject name of the certificate, and last the Subject Alternative Name extension of the certificate, if the certificate contains this extension. If an email address cannot be found, the notification is sent to the email address specified in the Sender's Email Address field of the Notification panel.
