Introduction

Unlike traditional eBilling / eNotification solutions, the IEG4 solution uniquely enables council staff to:

• set up notification types themselves for departments

• set the delivery methods available for each notification type

• set up notifications to be sent via:

  • GOV.UK Notify1

  • Facebook Messenger2

  • WhatsApp3

• set the content of messages sent in both plain text and HTML

• add content to notifications based upon back office data without code

• set whether a user has to proactively opt in to a notification

• have a consistent way of orchestrating the issuing of notifications and seeing whether notifications have been successfully sent across all departments

The solution also enables councils to:

• update the back office application in real time with the fact that the person has opted in to receiving their notifications/bills electronically (where APIs are available4)

• export a daily file of those users opting in/out of electronic notifications as a way of updating applications where APIs are not available.

The solution enables citizens to sign up to receive notifications through their profile within OneVu as well as during the process of registering to view personalised data.

Notes

1 GOV.UK Notify is a service all local authorities/public sector organisations are freely able to use. It provides a consistent way of sending electronic notifications in email, SMS, letter formats. You create templates within your GOV.UK Notify Account and link the template ids to notification types. Read more here:

https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk

2 The only pre-requisite needed is that a Council has a Facebook page. This is needed to connect the user’s OneVu account and their Facebook account to then send messages to them.

3 Like GOV.UK Notify you need to link template ids set up in Twilio for WhatsApp. As such the council needs to create a Twilio Account. When templates are created you can link them to your OneVu Notification Types without any code.

4 Currently Northgate Council Tax is supported for real time API updates.