Getting ready for Next-Generation Notifications

Developed as a direct response to your valuable feedback, Next-Generation Notifications help your library communicate with patrons by delivering the right message, in the right format, at the right time. This highly configurable system enables personalized communications that reflect your library’s unique identity and service model—and comes to you at no additional cost.

• Graphical layout supporting images and links
• Flexibility in scheduling and triggering notifications
• Customizable data fields to include in messages
• Multi-channel delivery (email, SMS, and MMS)
• Support for printing and resending notices
• Comprehensive notification history
• Copying templates to create new notices quickly and easily

These new notifications allow for the ability to include logos, web links, and custom messages in your notifications to customers. You are also able to customize the data elements you wish to include in a template. Additionally, you have control over notifications’ frequency and timing.

The Next-Generation Notifications project is designed with customer-driven flexibility in mind. Legacy notifications will remain active until Monday, June 28, 2027, giving libraries over one year to decide how and when to fully transition to the new system.

• Try them ASAP: Begin creating and activating new notifications as they become available in small groups over the coming months.
• Set up at your pace, enable later: Configure the new notifications as they are released, but wait to enable them for patrons until the complete set is available and configured.
• Wait and switch all at once: Hold off until all notifications are released, then set up and activate everything in one go.

Once your library enables the new notifications, the corresponding legacy notifications will automatically be turned off. All Next-Generation Notifications follow the same general setup procedure—so after configuring a few, the process becomes quicker and more streamlined for additional notifications.

If no action is taken to set up next-generation notifications, patrons will stop receiving notifications from your library on June 28, 2027, with the decommission of legacy notifications.

• Monitor release notes: Stay informed about which NGNs have been released and upcoming features by reviewing release notes with each update.
• Make an implementation plan: Collaborate with library staff to discuss template designs, notification types, policies, and your preferred timeline for implementation. Most notification types (such as loans, holds, and account notifications) are already ready to use, with all remaining NGNs becoming available by the end of summer 2026. Semester breaks can offer a convenient window for planning.
• Plan for staff time: Consider assigning the NGN transition as a project to one or a few staff members who can become experts, share knowledge, and lead staff discussions. Note that it can take up to 40 hours to complete all of the necessary tasks to transition to NGNs.
• Start when you’re ready: Begin configuring and setting up notifications at your convenience—you don’t need to start immediately.

• Name templates clearly: Think about what to name each template so that when you assign a template to a notification type on the policy screen, it is clear which template to choose from the pull-down list. For example, you might name Loan Due Date Reminders “LDDR – Undergraduates,” “LDDR – Graduates,” “LDDR – Faculty,” and “LDDR – Staff.” You will then find these templates listed together, alphabetically, on the template list and it will be clear which template to assign to which policy on the policy pages.
• Use template filtering: The list of templates can be filtered by notification type, making it easier to find and work with them:

• Use the template copy feature: Once a Next-Generation Notification template is configured, you can make a copy of it to speed up the creation of additional templates of the same type.

When you are ready to switch a type of notification from legacy to NGN, you can toggle it on at the Enable notification types screen.

It is important to be sure that all templates in the notification type you are turning on are complete. Notifications will not send if there are incomplete templates. To be complete, a template needs to have all required sections filled out. For example, for loan notifications, this includes the Template Name, Subject, and Loan Details. If a template is not complete, you will see an incomplete indicator to the left of the template name on the template list.

As you enable each new type of notification, the legacy notifications for that type will be automatically turned off.

New notifications will be scheduled on a Go Forward basis. If a newly scheduled notification date in a series falls in the past at the time of enabling notifications, that notification will not send. All scheduled notifications with dates in the future will send once they are enabled. In other words, new notifications will start going out as timed from the day of the switch, forward. Example: For both legacy notifications and NGNs, a library has three overdue notifications scheduled: 1) immediately, 2) three days overdue, 3) one week overdue. The library switches to NGNs for overdue notices when a patron has had an item overdue for two days. The patron will receive only NGN notifications #2 and #3.

You can make changes to the configuration of a notification at any time on the policy pages. Be sure to Save the Policy page after making your changes and then from the Policy page list, click on the Reschedule button to make sure all changes to the notification configuration are adopted from this point forward.

After clicking the Reschedule button, choose the notification type from the drop-down list:

Then, Confirm the changes:

Go through this process after you have made any kind of change to your notification configuration.

Yes, our text message notification integration automatically generates text message notification files to your library’s file exchange in CSV format. To prevent unnecessary buildup of files, we recommend that you do not enable the Messaging Integration until you have a solution in place with your messaging provider.

Text message notifications can only be used once the email/print notifications have been configured and enabled for a notification type. Since text messages are often limited in the amount of characters that can be used, the email/print notifications will always be the notifications that allow for the most complete information, and therefore, used as the primary source of communication. Text messaging will serve as a helpful reminder to patrons about the status of their loans, however, it will not be required to utilize text messaging.

You will need to link text messages from a third-party messaging service provider. Instructions on how to link text messaging can be found here.