Create a broadcast group

As part of an emergency preparedness program, we want to be able to send notifications to all employees based on the West Coast of the United States whenever a natural disaster affects the area.

We want to send notifications to all group members immediately, regardless of how other members respond to the notification. To do this, we use the broadcast group type.

To ensure that this broadcast group stays current as more users are added to xMatters, we'll use dynamic teams to populate the group membership. Dynamic teams are automatically generated to include members that match specified criteria. In this case, we'll add dynamic teams that select recipients based on their site. This ensures that new xMatters users will be included in the group as long as they are assigned to an appropriate site.

We will restrict who can access and notify this group so that low-permission users cannot send notifications to this group and that only certain high-permission users have permission to modify it.

  1. Click the Groups tab, and then click Add Group.
  2. In the name area of the Add Group dialog, type the group name, "West Coast Employees".
  3. Click + Add Description and type "Employees based in our Washington, Oregon, and California offices".
  4. Select Broadcast as the Group Type.
  5. On the Members tab, click in the recipient text area and begin typing the name of a dynamic team you want to add. In this example, begin typing "Washington". When "Washington Employees" is displayed, click its name to add it to the members list.
  6. Repeat the previous step or the remaining dynamic teams, groups, users or devices you want to add to the group. In this example, add the dynamic teams "Oregon Employees" and "California Employees".
  7. Click Add Group. The broadcast group's Overview tab is displayed.
  8. To change who has permission to modify this group, click the Edit link next to Supervisors.
    1. In the Group Supervisors dialog, add other users who will have permission to modify the group. In this example, add Mary McBride as a group supervisor.
    2. Click Save Changes.
  9. To change who has permission to view and send notifications to the group, click the Edit link next to Observers.
    1. Select the roles that have permission to view and notify this group. In this example, deselect Observed By All and then select Group Supervisor.
    2. Click Save.
  10. In the Advanced Options area, set the following options:
    1. Clear the Allow Duplicates flag so members do not receive more than one notification if they are included in the group multiple times.
    2. Check the Use Failsafe Devices flag so that xMatters may notify a user's failsafe devices when they do not have any other active devices.
    3. Set Site to Use for Holidays to None. This prevents the group from becoming inactive on holidays.

Form designers may want to consider the following tips when creating forms to use with broadcast groups.

Choose response actions (such as "Record Response") that do not cause xMatters to terminate the alert. If a recipient responds to a notification using a response action such as "End" or "Stop Notifying Target" the response from one recipient could end the alert before the remaining recipients are notified. For more information about response options, see Define response options.

Include a Handling section that allows a message sender to configure options that you may want to use in an emergency situation, such as the ability to notify all group members' devices regardless of their active timeframes. For more information about working with the Handling section, see Handling and sender overrides.

Consider adding a subscription form so that users who are not directly targeted by a notification are notified when an alert is created with the associated form.