Digest and Summary Rollup

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When to Use This Pattern

Use digest rollups when:

Stakeholders receive too many individual notifications and are tuning them out

Events are frequent but individually not urgent (new templates, daily metrics, weekly activity)

Leaders want a summary view rather than real-time detail

You want to reduce email volume without sacrificing visibility

How It Works

Phase	What Happens
Collect	Throughout the day/week, events are logged to a queue
Trigger	At a scheduled time, the digest workflow fires
Aggregate	Query all events since the last digest
Format	Build a structured summary (HTML email, PDF, Teams card)
Deliver	Send the digest to subscribers
Clean up	Mark events as "digested" or archive them

Implementation Guide

Step 1: Design the Event Queue

Every notification-worthy event writes to a shared queue:

Field	Example
event_type	"new_template"
summary	"Invoice Processing template published"
detail_url	Link to the full item
priority	low / medium / high
timestamp	2025-03-15T14:22:33Z
digested	false

Step 2: Schedule the Digest

Frequency	Best For	Timing
Daily	Operational teams	8:00 AM (before workday starts)
Weekly	Leadership, stakeholders	Monday 8:00 AM
Real-time for urgent	High-priority only	Immediate via Multi-Channel Notification

Step 3: Build the Summary Template

Design an email or Teams card template:

📊 Weekly Template Library Summary — Example Week (invented data)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📈 Quick Stats
• 5 new templates published
• 12 templates updated
• 120 total downloads this week (↑10% vs last week)
• 3 new patterns added to the library

🆕 New Templates
• Invoice Processing (Workflows) — Auto-approve invoices under $1K
• SAP Vendor Onboarding (RPA) — Full vendor setup with ECS Core
• Emergency Response Plan (PM) — Crisis management framework

📝 Recently Updated
• Employee Onboarding — Added IT provisioning section
• Contract Management — Updated approval workflow

🔥 Most Downloaded This Week
1. Expense Report (40 downloads)
2. Leave Request (30 downloads)
3. Purchase Order Request (20 downloads)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
View all templates: https://templates.example.com

Step 4: Group and Sort Events

Organise events logically in the digest:

High-priority items first — anything flagged as important
Group by category — new items, updates, metrics, warnings
Include counts — "5 new templates" is more scannable than listing all 5
Link to details — each item should have a "View" link for deep-dives
Include comparisons — "↑18% vs last week" adds context

Step 5: Handle Empty Digests

If nothing happened since the last digest:

Option	When
Send a "nothing new" note	Good for accountability (proves the system is working)
Skip the digest entirely	Better for reducing noise — nobody missed anything
Send a reduced summary	Just show the stats (downloads, views) without the event list

Tips & Best Practices

Tip

The best digests are scannable in under 30 seconds. Use clear headings, bullet points, and numbers. Save detailed information for the linked pages.

Let users choose frequency. Some people want daily digests, others weekly. Offer a self-service preference.

Include an unsubscribe link. Nobody should be forced to receive digests they don't want. This also keeps your open rates honest.

A/B test formatting. Try different layouts and measure open rates and click-through rates. What format gets people to actually read it?

Combine with a dashboard. The digest is a notification; the dashboard is the full picture. Link from the digest to a PowerBI or web dashboard for interactive exploration.

Visual Flow

When to Use This Pattern

How It Works

Implementation Guide

Tips & Best Practices

Related patterns

Multi-Channel Notification Router