More Options for Fulfillment Notice Scheduling (SMS)
Job schedules for fulfillment notifications are limited to terrible times for receiving text messages. SMS notifications run on the same job as the email letter notifications. For example, the "Send Courtesy Notices and Handle Loan Renewal" job has scheduling options of Not Scheduled, Everyday at 20:00, and Everyday at 24:00. The "Send Overdue Notices" job has scheduling options of Not Scheduled, Everyday at 03:00, Everyday at 05:00, or Everyday at 23:00.
Needless to say, these are not ideal time for our users to be receiving text messages on their phones. We would like to see more scheduling options during regular waking hours so users can receive SMS notifications during the day and not in the middle of the night.
Dear Customers,
The Alma scheduler for this job was improved and already supports much more flexibility and scheduling options, see attached picture.
Thanks,
The Alma Team
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François Renaville commented
This is simply common sense!
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Manu Schwendener commented
+1
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Naomi commented
We would like to see more schedule options also for the email notifications.
We can't expect patrons to check their mails in the middle of the night.
In short time loans, they get the mail on the same day as their due date and of course they complain about it.
Naomi -
Jim Holmes commented
Hi Moshe,
It would really be easiest if we could have one extra time option for "Send overdue notices" . 3am, 5am, and 11pm are not optimal times to receive texts and we've received some negative feedback in that regard from our patrons. If we could have one option between 8am and 8pm for the "Send Overdue Notices Job" it would solve the problem. Thanks for considering.
-jim -
Hi,
That definitely makes sense. I wonder though, the file names on the FTP location do include the name of the message type (+ a date/time sequence). Can't that be used to programmatically manage notification types differently, for example by distributing the files to separate directories that have separate SMS sending schedules ?
BTW, we are also working on enabling notifications to trigger webhooks in addition to the current FTP location option. That will enable a receiving application (on your end) to forward notifications to SMS management, or any other type of management you may want.
Thank you,
Moshe -
Jim Holmes commented
The problem is there are different instances of SMS notices. For instance, we want hold texts to go out as soon as the items are scanned in. We can't configure texts from our SMS provider so that some go out instantly and others at a certain time.
Thanks,
-Jim -
Hi,
Alma does not actually send the SMS message. It only places the required information at a configured location for an external application to take and use for sending the SMS. Can's that application trigger the messages at the time slots of your preference ?