How to send email, when users roles change - User Manager customization

Question

I've been tasked with an interesting challenge. The client wants a user to be sent an email informing them when they have been assigned to a specific role by an Admin.

What will be the best way to go about this?

Is it possible to do this via Workflows? Or will other methods be required?

Answer 1

One option is to hook into Sitecore's user:updated event (and optionally user:updated:remote). This event is raised when a user has been updated, the remote event handler is raised when a user was updated on a remote Sitecore instance.

EDIT: As pointed out in the comments by @SzymonKuzniak, you can also hook into the roles:usersAdded[:remote] event to specifically handle added roles. Likewise, there is also the roles:rolesRemoved[:remote] event.

Create a new configuration file and put it in App_Config\Include:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <events>
      <event name="user:updated">
        <handler type="Custom.UserUpdatedEventHandler, Custom" method="OnUserUpdated"/>
      </event>
      <event name="user:updated:remote">
        <handler type="Custom.UserUpdatedEventHandler, Custom" method="OnUserUpdatedRemote"/>
      </event>
    </events>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Create a class UserUpdatedEventHandler in the Custom namespace:

public class UserUpdatedEventHandler
{
    public void OnUserUpdated(object o, EventArgs args)
    {
        var sitecoreArgs = (SitecoreEventArgs)args;
        var membershipUser = (MembershipUser)sitecoreArgs.Parameters[0];

        // Check user and roles

        // Send e-mail
    }

    public void OnUserUpdatedRemote(object o, EventArgs args)
    {
        var sitecoreArgs = (SitecoreEventArgs)args;
        var userRemoteEventArgs = (UserUpdatedRemoteEventArgs)sitecoreArgs.Parameters[0];
        var userName = userRemoteEventArgs.UserName;

        // Check user and roles

        // Send e-mail
    }
}