We’ve talked about various aspects of implementation previously; now it’s time to focus on defining use cases. That means determining what types of messages the various users of your system will send and determining who has what access to your notification system.
Defining use cases
Understanding the different uses for your mass notification system will contribute to many of the remaining decisions you make around your implementation.
Why? HR, for example, will have different needs and more contact records than IT. Planning for those needs ahead of time will help you determine:
- How notifications will be launched (either automatically, through an interface, through integration with other systems, or by individuals)
- Who needs authority to create and launch notifications, create groups, and so on
- How you will build groups for notifying
- What security needs to be in place for your notification system to access contacts, user data, and groups of users
- What level of detail needs to be in message templates you’ll create
- How your messages will be created—with simple form-entry for launch or free form
Once your uses are defined, then you can start planning how to manage access to your system.
Managing access
It’s not often practical to give full access to all features and contacts to every one of your users. Typically, you’ll want to limit each user’s access to only the functions he or she actually needs. For example, HR may often need confirmation of message receipt; perhaps IT doesn’t if all they’re sending are status updates around network availability.
If you’ve done some data planning already, here’s a good place to revisit that work—by deciding how you want to limit data access, you can then determine how the data in the system
should be organized to allow for those restrictions. (Can you see now how difficult it would be to make these decisions after you had implemented your system?)
Access controls for your implementation should answer many questions, including:
- Who are the different users that will need access to system?
- What are their roles?
- Which users will be allowed to log in?
- Who will have access to the mobile app?
- Will groups and distribution lists require restrictions?
- Will you need to limit core functionality?
- Do you have a need to be able to import and export data?
- Will you need to make changes for custom wording, or changes for pronunciation on text-to-speech?
- Will you have to control the ANI (automatic number identification) for messages?
Learn more by downloading the white paper, Secrets to Implementing a Great Notification System.
