Meeting Notes: OpenLMIS Notification requirements

Date: 2018-09-25

Attendance: Alpha, Hassan, Mary Jo, Ashraf

Type of notifications
- Requisition (R&R) notifications
  - Approver would want email for pending R&R for approval
  - When the R&R is rejected (by LMU, district persons), the facility/district would like to be informed about that through email
- Reminders
  - In eMIS Reporting report provides email to facility feature, but in practice is not used so much in eLMIS
- UI to maintain the notification messages
  - eLMIS had screens to manage text bodies of the email with placeholder for database values
  - Ability to provide customized email body: One was an one of activity for Tanzania. From sustainability perspective, ministry folks may want to be able to update the text without having to go to a programmer.
    - Almost the same experience with VIMS as well, in Tanzania
    - In actual practice, user does not trigger/push notifications manually in VIMS
    - In VIMS context, SMS capability would have been useful, specifically for the communication between facility/district and district/region related to requisition/orders
  - Mode of notifications
    - Email
      - A must have feature. Most important mode for the notification
      - Using email server such as gmail could be unreliable because of daily email limits Google put on bulk email. For bulk email, it will also involve additional cost.
      - Also spam filtering used by google on number of allowed bounced email (email to invalid/out of date email addresses) can violate google spamming policy and can deactivate the account
    - “In application” (e.g., OpenLMIS showing notifications to the logged in user)
      - Good option to have
      - In VIMS context, in-application notifications was useful – e.g, to notify on pending IVD form submission, expiry messages
      - Such feature will allow consolidated repository of messages
      - Daily digest would be useful
      - Dashboard can display consolidated notifications and will be able to keep records of various notifications send earlier
      - VIMS does not have snooze or disregard options
        VIMS keeps track of “read” message and does not display them, once read
        Would be a very useful feature to have
      - Alpha: when you say "respond" do you mean the must approve and until then the notification is there? Alpha: Yes
    - SMS
      - Optional notification mode to have. Would be use more for VIMS, if made available
      - It Involve cost. If MoH will have to pay, it may not be sustainable since SMS messages may cost between $0.03 - 0.10/per SMS
    - User control
      - Consolidating messages (e.g., daily digest)
        Useful feature to have
      - Opting out
        Useful feature to have
      - Subscribing to notification by name or type would be useful
    - User Registration
      - Send email to newly registered user with temporary password and asking the user to login and change password
      - Verify email for first time registration or notification on password changes to verify authorized access