Overview of Group Messaging

Group messaging lets you to collaborate with multiple users simultaneously.

To support various business events such as ‘area outage in a location’, there can be a necessity to share a common message with a group of users. In such scenarios, you can identify a group of resources based on different business attributes and broadcast your messages to this group. The Group Messaging feature lets you to:

• Broadcast a message

• Broadcast an activity

• Start a conference chat with a group

This image shows the Group Message option:

Group Messaging: Send messages to a group of users simultaneously. Subject to visibility settings and collaboration user groups defined in the system, you can preform the following high-level tasks:

• Initiate group messages

• Send group messages to multiple users in a location

• Broadcast messages

• Initiate conference chats

• Broadcast activities

Message Broadcasting: Broadcast a common message to a group of users simultaneously so that the receiver can take appropriate action based on the information. You can broadcast a message with the following features:

Feature	Description
List	View the list of users selected for broadcasting.
Location	Select the location to initiate group message. System filters the users near that location based on the radius configured.
Radius	Adjust the radius (up to a max. of 100 miles or kms) to filter the users near a location. Note: You can configure the unit of radius in Configuration > Business Rules.
Broadcast message statistics	View the list of users who received the messages successfully.
	View the list of users who have read and acknowledged the messages.
	Receiver can accept and reject the messages received.
Update	Send the updated broadcast messages. Send the message notifications for an already broadcasted message.
Configure Expiry	Configure expiry period for a broadcasted message. Broadcasted messages are not delivered after the message expiry.
Chat	Receivers can initiate a one-to-one chat with the sender, even if you acknowledged or unacknowledged the broadcasted message.
	Control the incoming chat pop-ups based on your preferences. You can block the pop-ups for a specific browser, initiate and continue conversation from any monitor and setup visual display that you have turned-off the pop-ups for a session.
History	You can history of all the broadcasted messages saved in the chat History.

Activity Broadcasting: Transfer an activity to multiple users simultaneously with these rules:

• The user that accepts the transfer request first is assigned with the activity.

• The sender is notified if the receiver do not accept the activity with in a defined time limit.

• Before broadcasting an activity, the system filters the users based on the activity attributes like work skill, work zone and service window and then broadcasts the activity to the eligible users only.

• The User that accepts the broadcast message can interact with the sender through a one-to-one chat.

• An activity can be broadcasted even when the users are offline. The users can view the broadcast when they come online.

• The Technicians cannot accept the activity if they are offline.

Note: The Allow Activity Move Between Resources permission is required for a user to broadcast the activities.

Conference Chat: Initiate a conference chat with a group of users to communicate business specific information with multiple users simultaneously.

• Initiate a conference chat with the users based on your visibility settings.

• You can choose the receivers from a group for the conferencing purpose. The group can be collaboration user group, dispatcher group, or users in a location.