Business Events: SMS Notifications

If a subscriber to a business event is a mobile text notification, when the business event occurs, the system sends a mobile text notification (or multiple text notifications) to the mobile devices of particular recipients, based on the settings of the notification template that you have specified for the business event.

In this topic you will read about configuring and processing of SMS notifications created as subscribers of business events.

Licensing SMS Messaging

To send SMS messages from MYOB Advanced, your organisation must purchase licensing bundles that determine your SMS message allowance—each bundle allows the sending of 500 SMS messages per month. Two types of bundles are available:
  • Subscribed bundles are paid for in advance. They are available to all tenants. Once you have decided on the number of subscribed bundles you want to be billed for, this number cannot be changed.
  • Flexible bundles are paid for at the end of each month, depending on how many you use. Flexible bundles are specific to each tenant, and are only used once the subscribed bundles have been used up. You can change the number of flexible bundles available to you at any time during the month from the MYOB SMS Preferences (MYSM1000) form and you will only be billed for the bundles you actually use.
The intention of this licensing arrangement is that your organisation should purchase enough subscribed bundles to cover the normal amount of SMS messages you expect to send in a month. If you are running low on messages in a month, you can purchase flexible bundles as necessary to be able to continue sending SMS messages that month. System alerts will warn you when the SMS allowance is close to being used up and when it has been reached.
(Because you only pay for the flexible bundles that you use, it is possible to set the number of flexible bundles to a very high number to be sure that you will never run out of messaging; however, if a misconfiguration or other unexpected event results in a large number of messages being sent in a short time, you would have to pay for them all. Keeping the number of flexible bundles to a minimum guards against this.)
Note:
When you run out of messages, no more will be sent. If the allowance was reached part way through sending a batch of SMS messages, the remaining messages will not be sent, even if the allowance is increased after the fact by adding flexible bundles.

Enabling and Configuring SMS Notifications

To use SMS notifications, the MYOB SMS feature must be enabled under Monitoring and Automation on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

The SMS messaging functionality is set up on the MYOB SMS Preferences (MYSM1000) form. This form displays your messaging allowances and your current usage.

Configuring an SMS Notification as Subscriber

The easiest way to create a text notification for a business event is to do so while you are creating the event on the Business Events (SM302050) form: On the table toolbar of the Subscribers tab, click Create Subscriber > Mobile SMS Notification. This causes the system to open the Mobile Notifications form with the SMS option selected in the Delivery Method box and the correct value selected in the Screen box.

Also, you can open the Mobile Notifications (SM204004) form and configure a notification template to be used as a subscriber of the Mobile SMS Notification type. On this form, you must specify the SMS delivery method, the service provider, the description, the recipients of the notifications, and the template for the message. Also, in the Screen box, you specify the generic inquiry of the business event.

If a data entry form is selected as a source for the business event, you can create a notification template directly from the entry from. For details, see Business Events: Use of a Data Entry Form as a Source.

After you have saved the notification template, you can link it to the business event on the Send by Events tab of the template. You add a row to the table and select the needed business event in the Event ID column. You can also create a needed business event by clicking Create Business Event on the table toolbar of the tab. Alternatively, you can return to the Business Events form and add the notification template on the Subscribers tab for the event.

Using Placeholders in a Template

In the notification template you define on the Mobile Notifications form, you can use placeholders for the values of the form elements. As the placeholders, you can use the data fields available in the results of the generic inquiry of the business event as follows:

  • To specify the recipients of the notification (in the To box), you use the data fields (as the placeholders, separated with semicolons) that hold user phone numbers and whose values are retrieved when the business event occurs. Also, you can specify phone numbers explicitly, separated with semicolons.

    For example, if you want to send a text about a shipment confirmation to a customer, you can use a placeholder for the identifier of the customer's phone number, such as ((SOShipment_customerID!DefContactID!Phone1)).

  • In the body of the notification template (on the Message tab), you can click Insert Data Field on the formatting toolbar to insert as a placeholder any data field whose value is retrieved when the business event occurs. Also, you can click Insert Previous Data Field to insert as a placeholder any data field whose value was retrieved before the business event occurred.

    For example, suppose that you would like to notify a customer that the status of the case has changed to another one. You insert the ((CRCase_status)) data field, which represents the placeholder of the case status and whose value will be retrieved when the business event occurs. To show the previous status of the case, you click Insert Previous Data Field and select the same data field; the system will insert the placeholder with the PREV function, which in our example is PREV((CRCase_status)). When the event occurs, the system retrieves the value that the field had before the event has occurred.

Processing an SMS Notification as Subscriber

When the business event occurs and the system processes the subscriber of the Mobile SMS Notification type, the system extracts the values of the fields specified for placeholders of the template (from the results of the generic inquiry that satisfy the conditions) and inserts these values into the notification. The system then sends the text notification or notifications to the mobile devices of the recipients.

If the notification has been sent successfully, the system considers the subscriber to be successfully processed and adds a record on the Business Event History (SM502030) form. If any error has occurred during the processing of the notification template, the system displays the error on the Business Event History form for the business event.