SMS Notifications

Capabilities and Use Cases

The following user stories are supported:

• System users accustomed to SMS messaging can choose to receive their system notifications via text, rather than email

• Persons with multiple accounts in the system, such as a Practitioner and a Provider account, can use the same phone number for both accounts but only receive notifications for one account via SMS

• Administrators can see delivery status information, so that they can tell whether a given message was sent via SMS and if it was successfully queued for delivery

• Recipients of a text message can opt-out from further messages directly via SMS reply containing the word “STOP”, without needing to log into the system.

• During testing, SMS messaging can be suppressed or funneled to a specific phone number so that “real” texts are not sent out.

Configuration

Enabling SMS for a Notification

Once the feature toggle is enabled in the SysAdmin area, you can “SMS-enable” a Notification in the Admin → Automations → Templates area.

When a SNS-enabled Notification is sent to a recipient that has a SMS-enabled phone number, that recipient will receive a text message containing the subject line and a link to view the full message in the Communications History of the My Account area.

Enabling a phone number for SMS notifications

Once the feature toggle is enabled in the SysAdmin area, individual phone numbers can “opt-in” to notifications from the My Account and Account Profile screens.

Technically speaking, the opt-in actually happens when a user sends the word “START” to the number used for sending notifications. However, through the UI the user can request an “invitation” message which they can then reply to, simplifying the process.

The opt-in process satisfies all regulatory compliance requirements by identifying the purpose of the notifications, the expected frequency, the fact that data rates may apply, and how to opt-out in the future.

Configuring the “opt-in” messaging

There are two Content Blocks that can be customized to control the messaging.

Using “Test Mode” and “Override Number” settings

There are several settings in App Config that are relevant to the functioning of SMS.

The purpose of the test mode is so you can easily swap out settings. There is nothing special about test mode settings in terms of how our system interprets them, it is merely an alternate set of credentials and settings.

Twilio Test Mode

All Twilio accounts have both “live” credentials and “test” credentials. The test credentials will not allow you to send real messages but will instead be validated as described in this article: https://www.twilio.com/docs/iam/test-credentials. The purpose of the test credentials is to simulate success and error conditions without actually sending SMS messages and incurring cost.