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How to trigger Email as an Action

This guide will help you trigger emails as an ActionA Python class with a run method that takes a Validation Result and does something with it . It will allow you to send an email including information about a Validation ResultGenerated when data is Validated against an Expectation or Expectation Suite., including whether or not the ValidationThe act of applying an Expectation Suite to a Batch. succeeded.

Prerequisites

This how-to guide assumes that you have already:

  • Configured an email account on the SMTP server you are going to use to send the email
  • Identified the email addresses that messages will be sent to.
  • Created a CheclpointThe primary means for validating data in a production deployment of Great Expectations. which will be configured to send the emails.

Steps​

Open uncommitted/config_variables.yml file and add the following variables by adding the following lines:

smtp_address: [address of the smtp server]
smtp_port: [port used by the smtp server]
sender_login: [login used to send the email]
sender_password: [password used to send the email]
sender_alias: [optional alias used to send the email (default = sender_login)]
receiver_emails: [addresses you want to send the email to]  # each address must be separated by commas

2. Update action_list in your Checkpoint configuration​

Open great_expectations.yml and add send_email_on_validation_result Action to validation_operators. Make sure the following section exists in the great_expectations.yml file.

action_list:
    - name: send_email_on_validation_result # name can be set to any value
      action:
        class_name: EmailAction
        notify_on: all # possible values: "all", "failure", "success"
        notify_with: # optional list containing the DataDocs sites to include in the notification. Defaults to including links to all configured sites.
        # You can choose between using SSL encryption, TLS encryption or none of them (not advised)
        use_tls: False
        use_ssl: True
        renderer:
          module_name: great_expectations.render.renderer.email_renderer
          class_name: EmailRenderer
        # put the actual following information in the uncommitted/config_variables.yml file
        # or pass in as environment variable
        smtp_address: ${smtp_address}
        smtp_port: ${smtp_port}
        sender_login: ${sender_login}
        sender_password: ${sender_password}
        sender_alias: ${sender_alias}
        receiver_emails: ${receiver_emails}  # string containing email addresses separated by commas

3. Test your updated Action list​

Run your Checkpoint to Validate a BatchA selection of records from a Data Asset. of data and receive an email on the success or failure of the Validation.

Reminder

Our guide on how to Validate data by running a Checkpoint has instructions for this step.

If successful, you should receive an email that looks like this:

image

Additional notes​

If your great_expectations.yml contains multiple configurations for Data Docs sites, all of them will be included in the email by default. If you would like to be more specific, you can configure the notify_with variable in your Checkpoint configuration.

The following example will configure the email to include links Data DocsHuman readable documentation generated from Great Expectations metadata detailing Expectations, Validation Results, etc. at local_site and s3_site.

# Example data_docs_sites configuration in `great_expectations.yml`
data_docs_sites:
  local_site:
    class_name: SiteBuilder
    show_how_to_buttons: true
    store_backend:
      class_name: TupleFilesystemStoreBackend
      base_directory: uncommitted/data_docs/local_site/
    site_index_builder:
      class_name: DefaultSiteIndexBuilder
  s3_site:  # this is a user-selected name - you may select your own
    class_name: SiteBuilder
    store_backend:
      class_name: TupleS3StoreBackend
      bucket: data-docs.my_org  # UPDATE the bucket name here to match the bucket you configured above.
    site_index_builder:
      class_name: DefaultSiteIndexBuilder
      show_cta_footer: true
# Example Checkpoint configuration
action_list:
    - name: send_email_on_validation_result # name can be set to any value
          action:
            class_name: EmailAction
            notify_on: all # possible values: "all", "failure", "success"
            #--------------------------------
            # This is what was configured
            #--------------------------------
            notify_with:
              - local_site
              - gcs_site
            use_ssl: True
            use_tls: False
            renderer:
              module_name: great_expectations.render.renderer.email_renderer
              class_name: EmailRenderer
            # put the actual following information in the uncommitted/config_variables.yml file
            # or pass in as environment variable
            smtp_address: ${smtp_address}
            smtp_port: ${smtp_port}
            sender_login: ${sender_login}
            sender_password: ${sender_password}
            sender_alias: ${sender_alias}
            receiver_emails: ${receiver_emails} # string containing email addresses separated by commas

Additional resources​

The EmailAction uses smtplib. You can get more information about this module here.