Last month I delivered a webinar designed to distil the benefits of the Notifications Service into five key points, suitably named 5 Things to Know About Notifications. I’m glad to say that this session sparked a number of interesting conversations about use cases which our team are currently exploring – we hope that one or more of these will be the basis of a useful case study in the near future.

Until then, we are always open to talking to people from around the University who are looking to further develop how they communicate with their students.

The session and a summary

The session encapsulates much of the Notifications work that we have completed over the past year. A recording is available to watch now:

5 Things to Know About Notifications – webinar recording (login required)

1. Notifications are high-impact and students can trust their content

Our user research indicates that students often feel like they are overwhelmed by emails, especially at transition points such as the beginning of term. As detailed in our blog post from last year, we have found that University staff are keenly aware of this and try to be mindful not to overload students with information, especially via email.

Notifications are designed only to communicate the most important information to students, cutting through the noise and increasing the messages impact. Last year we found that click-through rates for Notifications were very high at the start of term, with up to 79% of users going on to interact with the call-to-action button after opening a Notification.

A screenshot of the Notifications interface in MyEd

Email is a powerful communication tool, but its ubiquity provides a vector for potential threats. Email is often used for phishing and malware attacks because it frequently lacks robust sender verification.

A trusted communication platform with strong security measures and thorough user authentication can significantly reduce these risks, ensuring that communications are secure and originate from verified sources. This is particularly important to consider in situations where students are expected to send sensitive personal information or authorise potentially large financial transactions.

We believe that Notifications can help bridge that gap.

2. We set up the Notification. You deliver it to your users, on demand

The Notifications Service may be integrated with almost any business system and configured to send out and update Notifications automatically. In situations where this not possible, or where Notifications are being trialled before an integration is to be arranged, a manual Template Notification may be used instead.

To establish a Template Notification, Portal Services work with the business area to agree on the text of the Notification. Once this process is complete, nominated users from the business area will then be able to trigger delivery of the Notification to a list of usernames on-demand.

I go into more detail about the Template Notification process in my previous blog post.

If you prefer a more hands-on presentation, this chapter of my webinar recording contains a live demonstration of the system in action (login required)!

3. Notifications can be personalised with very little effort

If you hear the term “personalisation”, you may think of the most basic variety – for example: a commercial email which uses your name to attempt to create rapport.

While this usage can be effective, we are more focused on examples of personalisation that can help students understand something or get to where they need to go with the least amount of effort possible.

I suggest a few possible examples in the webinar, including:

• A personal hyperlink which directs the user to the specific resource they require (which may differ from what other users may require)
• A personal hyperlink which pre-populates information into a form (for example: pre-populating identification information into a survey)
• A label which changes value (for example: informing a user of a deadline which may vary)

4. Use Notifications a lot? Our system is designed for integration!

If a Notification is expected to be sent too infrequently for a direct integration to be appropriate, it might make sense for it to be administered manually on an indefinite basis.

However, in most other cases it is important to both business users and Notification recipients that a direct integration is established between the relevant system and the Notifications Backbone:

• The business area will no longer need to perform the manual task of delivering the Notifications,
• Recipients can be assured that the Notifications they receive are up-to-date.

The Notifications Backbone has been designed to integrate with business systems using University-standard authentication and security protocols.

5. Portal Services are available to help at every step of the way

Our team are happy to talk about all things Notifications, whether it is discussing potential new uses, technical support, or discussing further integrations.

To get in touch, feel free to email us on our service email address: myed@ed.ac.uk

If you are interested in staying informed about the Notifications Service, you can subscribe to our Notifications Service mailing list.