TRACKING THE DELIVERY STATUS OF MASS OUTBOUND NOTIFICATIONS
Easily inform and automate follow-up activity
Easily inform and automate follow-up activity
Mass outbound communications are just that, a one-way message to multiple recipients, right? Not quite. Every notification system regardless of purposes has a return path of sorts. At a very basic level this is simply knowing which notifications got through and which didn’t – their delivery status.
On the other end of the scale you have very sophisticated solutions that enable two-way messaging. Recipients are actively encouraged to send a response back – confirming an appointment or that they are safe. With this feedback comes the need to tie all these different notification statuses and responses back to the one notification event. For many solution providers this is a complex issue.
In this two part post we take a look at a range of return path scenarios, the challenges and trade-offs and how these are managed through the Alerting Hub platform. First focusing on tracking the delivery status of mass outbound notifications.
When sending out notifications to multiple recipients it is vital that administrators can track the delivery status of messages in ‘real time’. Success and more importantly failures, due to a number of factors such as wrong numbers, engaged tone, etc, need to be understood. Appropriate follow-up actions can then be taken such as trying alternative channels or simply creating a list of those who need no further intervention. For a solution provider being able to easily pull all the delivery results together, for a particular notification event or campaign, enables a far slicker operation and means of tracking, monitoring and reporting. Alerting Hub simplifies the whole process by collating replies to an alert based on a single alert-id regardless of the communication channel used – SMS, Email, or Voice, and allowing push or pull access to the data.
Our bulk notifications post discusses sending a mass alert to a school where different messages were sent to staff and parents with delivery tracked. This is just one of many examples where there is a need to monitor the status of notification delivery to multiple recipients. Whilst the objectives range from the routine to crisis management the ability to know who received what through what channel can enrich the communication and understanding of the client: have they responded to their invoice payment reminder, have they seen a delivery notification of the school closure guidance or product recall alert.
Determine which parents and teachers have received notifications through which channels
Ensure everyone gets the message in time by identifying who didn’t get an alert through which channel
Make sure employees always have up-to-date information by understanding if and when a message isn’t picked up
No when to send notifications to subscribers through other channels
Ensure critical follow-up action can be taken – sending alerts through alternative channels
Having the ability to easily collect results means corrective action can be taken – manually by the administrator or automated (follow-up notifications sent via alternative channels). With Alerting Hub this data can be gleaned in two ways – polled or real-time (event driven)
Using the Alerting Hub scheduling subsystem it is very easy to manage automatic escalation of a campaign or alert. One example involves auto chasing of invoices. At the point that an invoice is raised, it is easy to schedule an email reminder for payment if it has not been received after the agreed 30 day period. If there is no response to the email are 35 days, a pre-programmed SMS message is sent. Finally if nothing is heard after 40 days a phone call is made, playing a customisable message to the caller with the option for them to log a response. This escalation – from ignorable emails through to mostly answered phone calls is logged by the Alerting Hub system evidencing the chase process.
Following on from the example given in our bulk notifications blog, where a single invocation of Alerting Hub’s sendalert API was used to send a “School’s closed due to snow” alert. Here we will show how the delivery status across the multiple channels used can be monitored.
Once you’ve initiated the alert using the sendalert API call we’ll respond with some initial information. If all goes well you’ll receive something similar to the example response below:
{ "success": true, "returnCode": 200, "alertId": "9ab246a9-7b22-4eed-aaca-7fc21bf05ce7", "clientRef": "snowalert", "alerts": [ { "alertType": "sms", "tag": "parent_sms", "success": true, "sentCount": 5, "requestedCount": 5, "remainingCapacity": 95 }, { "alertType": "sms", "tag": "teacher_sms", "success": true, "sentCount": 3, "requestedCount": 3, "remainingCapacity": 92 }, { "alertType": "email", "tag": "teacher_email", "success": true, "sentCount": 3, "requestedCount": 3, "remainingCapacity": 497 }, { "alertType": "call", "tag": "teacher_call", "success": true, "sentCount": 4, "requestedCount": 4, "remainingCapacity": 862 } ], "emailRefId": "0409_09172254" }
There’s two main methods of obtaining progress updates from Alerting Hub: callback or collection
{ "version" : "latest", "apiKey" : "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", "alertId" : "all", "options" : { "maximumItemsToReturn" : 50 } }
The response from Alerting Hub is an array of progress events, if any are found. In our example, the response to the 1st collectevents API call could look something like the following:
{ "success": true, "returnCode": 200, "numEventsRemaining": 0, "events": [ { "alertId": "9ab246a9-7b22-4eed-aaca-7fc21bf05ce7", "clientRef": "snowalert", "event": "started", "type": "alert", "whence": "2020-09-04T16:58:52.000Z" }, { "event": "sent", "type": "sms", "clientRef": "snowalert", "alertId": "9ab246a9-7b22-4eed-aaca-7fc21bf05ce7", "alertees": [ "+447777100100", "+447777100101", "+447777100102", "+447777100103", "+447777100104" ], "whence": "2020-09-04T17:19:20.000Z" }, { "event": "sent", "type": "sms", "clientRef": "snowalert", "alertId": "9ab246a9-7b22-4eed-aaca-7fc21bf05ce7", "alertees": [ "+447777200100", "+447777200101", "+447777200102" ], "whence": "2020-09-04T17:19:20.000Z" }, { "event": "sent", "type": "email", "clientRef": "snowalert", "alertId": "9ab246a9-7b22-4eed-aaca-7fc21bf05ce7", "alertees": [ "teacher1@school.com", "teacher2@school.com", "teacher3@school.com" ], "whence": "2020-09-04T17:19:20.000Z" } ] }
As you can see from the above progress reports, Alerting Hub is indicating that the alert has started and also that the two SMS have been sent to the relevant recipients as has the email. Repeated polling over time will also yield other events such as SMS delivery notes, SMS replies (if enabled), email replies (if enabled) and voice-call responses. Alternatively, and preferred, Alerting Hub can send progress reports as they happen by a callback URL you provide, this is the most efficient way of handling Alerting Hub progress reports. See the API guide for more information.
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