Notifications Categories

Different types of messages can be sent between healthcare organizations and patients. Some are related to patients' health, and others are operational, such as billing, scheduling, and tech support.

To distinguish between the various types of messages in the Patient Care Journey app and in Atrium, notifications are categorized.

Patient notification preferences are created by default and enabled only for email when a patient signs up for an account with Tendo. Patients can change their preferences in their Account > Settings in the Patient Care Journey app. They can set preferences for categories of messages they want to receive, and the channels they prefer to receive them on - email, SMS, and/or push notifications under each message category.

On the healthcare organization side, message categories help direct messages to the correct teams to address them.

Tendo delivers out-of-the-box categories by default after tenant provisioning, but you may need to customize and extend them to meet customers' particular needs. For example, some customers may not want to include a category for Billing in patient notifications preferences if they handle billing in another way. Some customers may want to add a custom category.

Email messages from Tendo by default are sent from admin@tendo.com. SMS messages are by default sent from a long code number, whereas messages from Outreach are sent from a short code number.

Message categories can be configured to be sent from a particular customer’s email address, and to include particular content such as custom footers depending on the category.

Separate Notifications

Separate deliverability of notifications is ensured by maintaining separate sender identities per customer and per message type. Spam reporting is a significant factor in deliverability, so outreach notifications that are sent from one customer are from a different sender email than those sent by another customer. This prevents the spam rates of one customer from impacting the deliverability of another customer’s notifications.

Outreach notifications don’t impact other notifications such as appointment reminders and lab results. Notifications are sent from specific email addresses and SMS codes which are unique to customer and category:

• Transaction notifications are from an email address that is unique per customer. All transaction emails except for Outreach are sent from one address. For SMS, a patient at the same organization receives an appointment reminder from a unique phone number at the organization. All subsequent text messages are sent from the same number.
• When the organization sends out an Outreach campaign about an upcoming blood drive,for example, the patient receives an email from outreach@[SubdomainName].tendo.com. For SMS, the patient receives a text from the organization’s unique number for Outreach.

Categories

Categories for notifications that Tendo delivers by default include

• Appointment - Details and tasks related to upcoming appointments.
• Billing - Billing and payment information.
• Lab Results & Resources - Lab, orders, or other test results from a patient’s providers, as well as any other supporting material (letters, resources).
• Proactive Messaging - Proactive reminders about a patient’s healthcare from their providers.
• Provider Communications - Messages from a patient’s providers regarding the patient’s medical questions, prescriptions, or other communications.
• Tasks - Tasks generated by a patient’s providers that require the patient to complete an action, such as scheduling a test or picking up a prescription.
• Visit Summary - Summaries of past appointments completed by a patient’s providers.
• General - Miscellaneous messages.
• Account - Messages relating to a user's Tendo account, such as invites, password resets, etc. This category is not listed in the Patient Care Journey app’s notifications preferences and is not edited on the admin side.

Customer Engagement can create additional categories for healthcare organizations' specific needs.

Viewing a Category

A category is a way to define what a message is about and its purpose as well as to specify the From address, footer, and other category-specific options. Each message template needs to have a category defined based on the template’s purpose. This is required if the customer wants to enable message categorization and patient preferences.

Default message templates in a customer tenant are categorized with one of Tendo’s default categories. You can update the category on a template, and edit a category. Default behaviors for message templates with undefined categories are set outside of patient preferences.

To view message categories, log into Atrium, and select Tools from the top left dropdown menu. Click on Notifications on the left navigation bar. Then click on the Categories tab at the top. Select a category. You can see information about the category in its Details view to the right. The example below is for the Appointment category.

Creating a Message Category

To create a new message category, click on the + icon at the top of the category list.

The Create Message Category modal will display.

You can input the following information:

Ref Id - The reference id for the category is used internally to uniquely identify it. It is used for referencing the category in message templates and other places on the backend. It does not appear in the apps. Required.

Name - The name/label for a category that is visible to end users. It is displayed on the user preference page in the Patient Care Journey app. Example: Appointments. Required.

Description - The description of the category that appears in the Patient Care Journey app’s Settings as a subhead under the category’s name. It explains the type of message the category includes. Example: Details and tasks for upcoming appointments. Optional.

Display in User Preferences - This checkbox enables healthcare organizations to choose whether they want a category to appear in the Notifications Preferences settings in the Patient Care Journey app. Checking the box indicates that the category will appear, while unchecking makes it not appear. Optional.

Display Email Unsubscribe Link - Enabling this toggle switch allows the admin user to add the unsubscribe option to the footer of notifications in this category. This is used for both email and SMS. Set it as TRUE to include the link in the footer. For SMS, the RefID is required and can’t be changed. Required.

Email Sender Address Override - Specifies the email address from which messages in a category will originate. The default address is the default email address for a specific environment. If left blank, Tendo’s default sender address is used in production: tendo@admin.com. Customers may want to override this default and configure their own email addresses for one or more categories. This requires that Customer Engagement verify customer email identities so that they can be used in tenanted configuration afterward. Optional.

Tendo’s default sending address for production tenants is tendo@admin.com., but for other internal Tendo environments, the sending domain is separate for each environment. 

An override sender address can be specified per:

• Tenant
• Message Category

When overriding the sender address, Customer Engagement and the customer need to work through a manual process to validate and configure the overriding sending domain.

Separate addresses must be maintained for emails for message categories.

• All messages from Tendo for a specific customer are sent from:
  • outreach@customer[SubdomainName].tendo.com for all Outreach emails.
  • notifications@customer[SubdomainName].tendo.com

Provisioning of subdomains is managed via internal customer tenant configuration during the tenant set up process. The tenant uses what is defined for the customer. Because notification services, campaigns, and all messages are affected by the configuration, Customer Engagement must test to ensure that all messaging works as expected.

SMS notifications are by default sent from a long code number, whereas notifications sent from Outreach are sent from a short code number.

The only other default Customer Engagement needs is staging, which is admin@tendosys.com for email and a long code number - +1 (833) 637-1233.

Email Sender Name Override - The display name that appears on the email inbox for notifications in a category. The system default can be overridden. If its is left blank, Tendo’s default name - admin - is used in production. Optional.

SMS Sender Number Override - If left blank, Tendo’s default SMS number - 58398 - is used in production. Text must be enabled to be sent from unique phone numbers per customer. Optional.

The provisioning process for texts is the same as for emails. The number needs to be maintained per customer. Tenants use the customer provisioned number. Separate numbers must be maintained at two levels:

• Customer level - Provision a unique phone number per customer. 
• Message level - Provision a unique phone number for:
  • Transactional notifications (all messaging except Outreach)
    • The decision of whether to assign a unique long vs. short code can be impacted by the type of message and features such as two-way messaging. For example, for two-way messaging AWS recommends short codes. See Choosing a phone number of sender ID - Amazon Pinpoint SMS.
  • Outreach notifications 

The impact on Notification and Platform Services is the same as for emails. The impact should be assessed to ensure that updates are made where needed for all services to run as expected.

Click Create. You can now see the new category in the Message Category list. You can see its detail information by clicking on the category.

To make sure the category is appearing properly in the Patient Care Journey app, log in to the app, and navigate to the Account user settings. You can see the new category added in the Notifications page.

Footers

Footers of message templates and the address from which they are sent are tenanted, and a predefined footer is inserted into the email body.

Some footer content is specified per message category, so when you choose a category for your message, the options that appear in notification templates are those that have been specified for the category. The following footer customization can be done by category:

• The customer’s Organization name, location (address) and contact name. These must be included per CAN SPAM requirements that senders identify who they are and include their physical address and contact information.
• Link to unsubscribe. Select this in the specific category. The Enable Unsubscribe option must be configured for certain message categories in order for the Unsubscribe option to be available in message templates for those categories of emails. When Enable Unsubscribe is not checked, a link to unsubscribe does not appear in the footer. When it is checked, the sentence “To unsubscribe from receiving similar emails in the future, click <here>.” appears in emails. In SMS, the following is appended to SMS messages for the category: “Reply STOP to stop receiving messages.” The patient can type STOP to cease receiving messages from that sending number. The link can take the user to a page where they can manage their notification preferences or, if they are a user of the Patient Care Journey app, the link can point to the notifications preference settings in the app. To test the SMS, a workflow must be configured in a non-production environment so that the admin can receive test text messages.

You can fully customize the content of a footer in a specific notification template, including adding other links and content based on the customer’s need. The footer content can be saved, reused, and previewed in the template editor. See Notifications Templates.

Editing an existing Message Category

You may need to update Tendo-delivered categories to reflect changes in customers' processes or patient engagement needs. 

To do so, navigate to Tools and click on Notifications. Select the category you want to update in the category list. Click on the … dropdown menu on the right of its detail view, and click Edit.

An Edit Message Category modal displays, and you can make changes to the category.

Ref ID is not editable, but you can modify the content in other fields.

Click Update.

Testing a Category

To test a category, use the Templates tab to create an email template that you give that category and send a test email. Open it in your email program to verify that the content is appearing properly.

Since your category also is visible in the Patient Care Journey app user preferences, log into the app, navigate to the patient Account, and choose Settings. In Notifications, you can see an updated description to that category on its preferences page.