Notification Templates - Administration

• Overview
• Creating a Notification Template

Overview

Notification templates are pre-built, pre-approved messages your team can send in seconds — by hand, or automatically through workflows. Each template can fire across multiple communication channels at once, including SMS, email, push notifications and web feed publishing, plus optional extras like desktop takeover and voice calling. Use them to:

• Send emergency comms faster — no drafting under pressure, no second-guessing wording mid-incident.
• Automate notifications from workflow triggers — fire a message when an alert is raised at a specific time or location, or when someone checks in to a sensitive area. (See Workflows in the support site for the kinds of triggers you can hook into.)
• Reduce the chance of errors — wording is locked in, channels are pre-set, recipient groups are already defined.
• Remove the comms bottleneck — once templates are approved, less experienced staff can send them confidently. Ideal for night shifts, weekends, and out-of-hours cover where your senior comms people aren't on call.

Notification Template Categories

Notification Template Categories group related templates so they're quick to find on screen and double as a permissions tool, so users only see the templates they're authorised to send. It is recommended that these are configured prior to building the templates.

Please see the guide on Template Categories for more information and how to set them up.

Creating a Notification Template

To create templates you will need the Notification Administrator permission. There are further granular permissions which can be assigned to allow enabling, editing and deleting of templates.

1. Go to the Notification Administrator page in Admin - Notifications - Templates where you will see a list of existing templates and categories, then click on "Create New Template"

2. Enter the Template Name in the appropriate box

3. Select the Template Category for the new template (E.g. Emergency Notifications, General Messages, Travel Notifications, Workflow Automations, etc.)

4. Select default recipients for the template:

   All Users: Sends to everyone registered and pre-registered in the SafeZone system

   Specified User Groups: Sends just to members of that User Group - if selecting this option you will need to select the group from the drop list below
   

   Specified later (Workflows/Escalations/Desktop/Web Publishing/Subscription Groups): Some communication channels, such as webfeeds and desktop comms don't apply to users. For templates with exclusively these channels, this can be selected. Other templates are used for automations and so recipients are governed by the workflow engine. For most workflows, therefore this should be selected.
    

5. Add content for the each communication channel to be used in the template by checking the box to enable and then completing the expanded fields. There is further information on each of the channels separately:
    

   Channels available Push Notification SMS Email Desktop Notifications Twig InReach (Garmin) Voice Calling Web Publishing

6. Click "Save Changes" to confirm or "Discard Changes" to go back

Three common delivery channels (Push Notification, SMS and Email) are broken down below.

Push Notification

1. To send out the notification as a push notification, tick the check-box for "Send push notifications to users with the application installed". The options menu will expand to display more settings.
   
2. To request users check-in on the SafeZone app tick the box for "Request Check In"
3. Under the Applications options, you can choose which apps receive this notification. Select from "OmniGuard" and "SafeZone".
4. Under Sound you can choose the type of sound/behaviour the alert raises when it is sent to the users' devices:
   • Silent - recommended for non-urgent notifications;
   • Silent with vibrate - recommended for notifications which need to stay silent but also vibrate (ie Active Shooter/intruder scenarios);
   • Default Notification Sound - uses the device's default notification sound;
   • Alarm - uses the devices alarm sound;
5. Enter in the title for the alert in the Title (Optional) field. The title appears in bold text above the message on the device
6. In the Web Address (Optional) field, you can enter in a web address that the users can visit to see detailed step-by-step instructions on what to do during the incident. This feature can be useful as the push notification screen is limited to 256 characters - having the users visit a web address can allow you to send through evacuation procedures to users.
7. In the Notification Message field, you can create the notification message which you can push out to the users. Any changes to the notification message will display in the Message preview field.
   
    
8. In the example above, you can see the Incident and Campus substitution tags we created in the Template Category. Clicking on a substitution tag and selecting the option to substitute will modify the message to display the text in the substitution tag.
    
9. The Message preview field will display what the message will look like when it is sent out. Messages will not send if there are unused substitution tags in the message preview (if there are "{" and "}" characters still showing) - to resolve this, select an option from the substitution tag as per step 8 OR delete the substitution tag and replace it with normal text.
10. To continue setting up the notification template to add SMS and Email, please refer to the steps for SMS and Email below
11. If you do not need to add SMS or Email to the notification template, you can save your template. To save your template click on Save Changes otherwise, click on Discard Changes to discard your changes and go back to the templates screen.

SMS

1. To send out the notification via SMS, tick the check-box for "Send SMS messages". The options menu will expand to display more settings.
   
2. For SMS Recipients, you can choose to send to "Only pre-registered recipients" or to "All recipients".
   Sending the SMS to the pre-registered recipients requires a mobile phone number added to their user record. Sending the SMS only to pre-registered recipients reduces the number of duplicate notifications that users get (useful if you are sending non-urgent notifications)
   One limitation of the SMS Message notification is that it is limited to 140 characters. The characters remaining will count down and let you know how many characters are left in your message.
3. In the example above, you can see the Incident and Campus substitution tags we created in the Template Category. Clicking on a substitution tag and selecting the option to substitute will modify the message to display the text in the substitution tag.
4. The Message preview field will display what the message will look like when it is sent out. Messages will not send if there are unused substitution tags in the message preview (if there are "{" and "}" characters still showing) - to resolve this, select an option from the substitution tag as per step 3 OR delete the substitution tag and replace it with normal text.
5. To continue setting up the notification template to add Email, please refer to the steps for Email below
6. If you do not need to add Email to the notification template, you can save your template. To save your template click on Save Changes otherwise, click on Discard Changes to discard your changes and go back to the templates screen.

Email

1. To send out the notification via email, tick the check-box for "Send email messages". The options menu will expand to display more settings.
   
2. Enter the subject of the email in the "Email Subject (Optional)" field.
3. Enter in the notification into the "Message (2000 remaining)" text box. The character limit will count down until it reaches 0 and will let you know when you have gone over the character limit.
4. In the example above, you can see the Incident and Campus substitution tags we created in the Template Category. Clicking on a substitution tag and selecting the option to substitute will modify the message to display the text in the substitution tag.
5. The Message preview field will display what the message will look like when it is sent out. Messages will not send if there are unused substitution tags in the message preview (if there are "{" and "}" characters still showing) - to resolve this, select an option from the substitution tag as per step 4 OR delete the substitution tag and replace it with normal text.
6. To save your template click on Save Changes otherwise, click on Discard Changes to discard your changes and go back to the templates screen.

Send a Notification Template
 

Once you have created your Notification Template, you can then send it from the Notification Templates screen. You can also send your Notification Template from the Notify screen as covered in the guides below:

• Send a Notification
• Send a Templated Notification

To send a Notification Template:

1. Click on Admin -> Notifications -> Templates -> click on the template you wish to send
   OR
   Click on Notify -> click on the template you wish to send
2. Click on Send to send the notification
   

Edit a Notification Template

Once you have created a notification template it will appear in the list of Notification Templates. It may be necessary to edit the template if you need to change the message.

To edit a Notification Template:

1. Click on Admin -> Notifications -> Templates -> click on the template you wish to edit
   
   OR
   Click on Notify -> click on the template you wish to edit -> Advanced View -> Open Template Editor in the top left
   
   
   Advanced View will appear in the top-right if your notification template has all necessary fields completed and is in a "ready-to-go" mode ie. you can click on the template and send it without having to change the content of the template. 
   If you see the Simple View button in the top right, click on Open Template Editor.
2. The template will be opened in View mode. To change to Edit mode, click on Edit at the bottom of the screen
   
3. Modify the notification template to suit your organisation's messaging
4. To save your template click on Save Changes otherwise, click on Discard Changes to discard your changes and go back to the templates screen.

Copy a Notification Template

Now that you have created your notification template you can then copy it. Copying a template is useful for:

• Creating a duplicate notification which is to be sent to a different team eg. the original notification template with limited information is sent to a Silver response team, the copied version with more information is sent to a Gold response team and another copied version with detailed information is sent to a Platinum response team.
• Command users with "Send templates only" in their user permissions which does not allow the Command user to modify the content of the template before they can send out the message.

To copy a Notification Template:

1. Click on Admin -> Notifications -> Templates -> click on the template you wish to edit
   
   OR
   Click on Notify -> click on the template you wish to edit -> Advanced View -> Open Template Editor in the top left
   
   
   Advanced View will appear in the top-right if your notification template has all necessary fields completed and is in a "ready-to-go" mode ie. you can click on the template and send it without having to change the content of the template. 
   If you see the Simple View button in the top right, click on Open Template Editor.
2. The template will be opened in View mode. To copy the template, click on Copy at the bottom of the screen
   
    
3. A new template window will appear with the template titled "Copy of <template name>" in the Template Name field.
    
4. Edit the copied template by following on from Step 3 in Create New Template above.
5. To save your template click on Save Changes otherwise, click on Discard Changes to discard your changes and go back to the templates screen.
   Important: Whether you click on Save Changes or Discard Changes, a copy of your template is still created in the Notification Templates. If you do not wish to keep your template in the list, please follow the steps below to Delete a Notification Template

Delete a Notification Template

You may need to delete a template if you have created one in error or your organisation does not use the template for notifications anymore.

To delete a Notification Template

1. Click on Admin -> Notifications -> Templates -> click on the template you wish to edit
   
   OR
   Click on Notify -> click on the template you wish to edit -> Advanced View -> Open Template Editor in the top left
   
   
   Advanced View will appear in the top-right if your notification template has all necessary fields completed and is in a "ready-to-go" mode ie. you can click on the template and send it without having to change the content of the template.
   If you see the Simple View button in the top right, click on Open Template Editor.
2. The template will be opened in View mode. To delete the template, click on Delete at the bottom of the screen
   
    
3. You will receive a warning asking if you are sure you want to delete the template
4. To delete your template click on Delete Template otherwise, click on Cancel to go back to the Notification template screen.