Notification Templates

Pre-requisite: In order to create Notification Templates you will need to have Notification Administrator enabled in your user permissions. Please refer to the Editing user permissions user guide or speak to your SafeZone Command administrator to give you access.

Notification Templates allow you to standardise the messaging for mass notifications so that Command users do not have to create ad-hoc notification messages during crisis/emergency incidents. 

The benefits of standardising notification messages include:

• Having preset messages that can be used during emergency situations which can be sent with minimal editing;
• Having the ability to send email and SMS (if the mobile numbers have been provided) notifications to pre-registered users even if they have not registered with the SafeZone app;
• Allowing Command users with limited administrator permissions to be able to send Notification templates;
• The ability to copy notification templates for use with different teams and scenarios

Before creating Notification Templates, have you considered creating Template Categories to group your templates and creating substitution tags to minimise creating duplicated templates? For instructions on how to set up template categories, please see the guide on Template Categories.

To see the Notification Templates, click on Admin -> Notifications -> Templates to bring up the Notification Templates menu (the screenshot below is for illustration purposes)

This guide is divided into 5 sections:

• Create New Template
• Send a Notification Template
• Edit a Notification Template
• Copy a Notification Template
• Delete a Notification Template

Create New Template

To create a Notification Template:

1. Click on Create New Template.
   
   In the steps below we will create a template called "Emergency Incident" using the Template category "Emergency" which we created in the Template Categories guide.
   
2. In the Template Name field, enter in the name for your template.
3. Select the Template Category you wish to assign this template to under Template Category.
   
   
4. Under Select Notification Groups select the groups you wish to send this notification to. Selecting notification groups here means that the groups are pre-selected when using the template for sending out notifications (you can add/remove user groups manually when it's time to send out the notification)
   
   Don't see any user groups and only see "All Users" as the only option? Please see the user guide on User Groups for help on setting up user groups.
   

Each delivery method (Push Notification, SMS and Email) to send the notification is broken down into its own section 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.