AppArmor has an additional interface that can be used to send notifications, called the “Advanced Notification” Sending” interface. This interface is meant to allow advanced users of the system to send a notification in a single-page interface, instead of the standard “Wizard” approach.
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Prerequisites
In order to use the Advanced Notification interface, your AppArmor system must be configured by our team for “Event-Based Sending”, and also have the Advanced Sending interface enabled. These changes need to be made by the AppArmor support team because the Advanced Sending interface is more complicated and it is important that your team is trained to use it properly.
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Contact the AppArmor support team for assistance in configuring your system to use the Advanced Notification inteface.
Sending a Notification
The Advanced Notification interface is designed in a two-column format. The interface is designed to be followed by columns first, top to bottom. This ensures that the sequence of steps are completed in the proper order as some information from earlier steps is required for later steps.
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When accessing the Advanced Notification interface, the sytem can be in one of two states:
There are no active events, so the “New or Existing Event” dropdown list says “[New Event]”
There are one or more active events, so the “New or Existing Event” dropdown list will be pre-populated with the event most recently sent a notification.
It is important to train your users to identify which event they are sending a notification for.
New Event
When a new event is selected, the initial message will become the title of the event. You will notice that if no events are active, the “[NEW EVENT]” option is selected by default.
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When sending a notification for a new event, you will also have the option to choose the Event Type (Actual, Test, or Exercise). The selection of the event type controls the list of Sending Profiles available for this notification.
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Existing Event
If one or more existing events are active, the system will try to configure itself to help the user quickly send a notification and select the most recent active event from the list. In this case, an event will already be selected.
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If an existing event is active, the user can create a notification for a new event by selecting “[NEW EVENT]” from the list. Please note, that if you choose an existing event, the “Event Type” field will be inaccessible because it was already configured by the initial message for the event. It is not possible to change the event type for an active event.
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Choosing the Template
After the Event is selected, the user needs to select the template of the message to send. There is a “Category” dropdown list that allows the user to filter the list of templates by Common Alerting Protocol (CAP 1.2) category. This helps locate a template quickly.
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Generally speaking, once you have begun manually modifying the message content, it’s best not to backtrack.
Message Content
The Message Content panel provides the user an opportunity to modify the message as necessary. This is useful if small changes are required to the message that were not appropriate from the template.
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Please note that in multilingual systems, the interface will display fields for each language.
Sending Profiles
Now that the message has been composed, we need to choose the recipients of the message. The Sending Profiles panel displays a list of the sending profiles available based on your event type. Also, if you are updating an existing event, then the sending profiles previously used will be pre-selected.
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Filtering by User Fields
After your sending profiles have been selected, you can also choose to target a specific subset of users by using the “Filter” button. This will display the user list along with the filtering interface.
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Place a checkmark next to the users you would like to target, then press “Save Users Selection”.
Filtering by Map
If your selected Sending Profiles contain geographic data about the recipients, then you’ll have the option to target recipients by drawing on a map. This is useful when targeting messages to recipients in a specific geographic location.
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When your circle or polygon is complete, the map will center itself on the selection, and update the “Map Users” count listed in the top left corner. Press “Save Users Selection” to save the users, and return to the Advanced Sending Interface.
Recipient Summary
Once you have completed selecting your Sending Profiles, and filtering by using the user fields or map, then a summary of the recipients who will receive your message is displayed.
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If you chose to filter the users, you’ll notice a label that says “Filtered: XX Users” in the top right. You can also hover your mouse over each of the mechanisms to view details of the recipients by mechanism.
Scheduling
Optionally, you can choose to schedule when your message is sent, and when it is deactivated. This is done through the scheduling panel. Your system may be configured with an “Auto-Deactivate” time which is set by default. (Contact AppArmor Support to have an Auto-Deactivate time configured for your system.)
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Please verify the selected time zone when setting a specific date and time.
Notification Preview
Before sending, you can preview how your notification will look on the various endpoint mechanisms. Click the Notification Preview button for a popup preview interface.
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When you’ve finished previewing the message, click the “Close Preview” button.
The Send Button
The label on the send button is purposely designed to provide a final confirmation. The button label consists of the word “Send” followed by the event type (e.g. Actual, Test, Exercise) and either “Alert” (if this is the first message in a new event) or “Update” (if this is a subsequent message in an existing event). Also, the color of the send button will vary by event type. Pay close attention to the send button, as it tries to provide additional reassurance information about your notification.
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If all details are correct, press “OK” to send the notification.
Success Screen
After your notification has been sent, you will see a “Notification Sent Successfully” screen, which include a button to access the tracking page where you can monitor progress and view tracking events.
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