by Josh Tafoya, Technical Trainer
Bold Group is very pleased to announce the availability of Manitou version 2.1! To help “spread the word,” we are spending some time on our Bold blog highlighting some of the exciting new features built into Manitou’s newest release. Some of the newly created features are long-time requests from several of our monitoring center partners. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Enhanced Subscriptions:
Another of the features I’ve been asked about during my time at Bold Group is the ability to use notifications more effectively.
Many monitoring centers have expressed surprise that, while notifications are certainly possible in Manitou, their old software seemed to make it easier to set up those notifications.
As an example, in Manitou, previous versions required an action pattern to be created for any notifications. This means, if a customer ONLY wanted an email when there was a Freezer Alarm, but none of the other events which also use G6 as their action pattern, they were forced to create a unique action pattern, then apply that programming. While this method has worked for years, it meant that those rare customers who had dozens of different scenarios they wanted to be emailed on had to create dozens of corresponding action patterns.
With the release of Manitou 2.1, we now have Enhanced Subscriptions.
You are able to set up a script containing the exact formatting of a message, including HTML formatting (so your notification message is capable of font manipulation, tables, and even graphics.)
Depending on the type of script, you are able to specify that the script is used to send notifications to particular contacts from the customer’s contact list (including contacts at the dealer and monitoring company level). All with a few checkboxes.
This means that the same default action pattern can be used while allowing notifications of the various contacts.
We can choose to send the emails based on Event Code (or combination of selected event codes). Or by Event Category. Or whether or not an Authority (Police, Fire, or Medical) was dispatched. There are two more conditions that can cause emails to be sent out, but I want to address each of those separately.
The first is the ability to send emails when a specific resolution code is used. We didn’t really have this ability before without a decent amount of logic and use of the Post Processing. Now you can simply mark a box and define which resolution code or codes. It’s much easier now.
The second is the ability to send an email when an account has been edited. Again, we were able to send scheduled reports when accounts had been edited, but that was only practical in cases where the person receiving the email was at a dealer or similar high level so they would be able to review the edits. We could have set up an Audit trail report to be sent on a regular basis, but this meant that then we couldn’t choose NOT to send the email had there been no edits. With the Account Change checkbox, it will simply send an email with the prescribed script whenever an account change happens. I know dozens of monitoring centers have asked for this exact functionality.
I think you will find these enhanced scripts and enhanced subscriptions to be very useful indeed! There’s more to come… check back next week for another new feature of Manitou 2.1.