Onboard with NHS Notify

Use this page to find out what you need to do step by step to onboard with NHS Notify.

Get invited to onboard
Prepare your integration
Confirm your setup to get access to our integration environment
Build your integration
Complete integration testing
Apply to go live
Go live

1. Get invited to onboard

Once you get started and register your interest, we’ll contact you to either:

learn more about your use case
invite your organisation or service to onboard

If your organisation or service is invited to onboard, we’ll send you an email. This email will include:

what you need to do next
an online form to confirm your setup
the Supplier Conformance Assessment List (SCAL) you need to complete before you go live

2. Prepare your integration

You must prepare your integration before you can get access to NHS Notify’s integration environment.

You’ll need technical or developer support to complete tasks in this step.

If you’re using NHS Notify API

You’ll need to:

Set up your APIM application ID

To set up an APIM application ID, you need to:

Sign in to your NHS Digital developer account.
Create an APIM application.
Select ‘integration test’ as the environment.
Select ‘Communications Manager (integration environment)’ as the connected API.

Choose how you want to see your message performance

To see how your messages perform, you can get the status of a message or choose to receive realtime message callbacks.

If you want to receive realtime message status callbacks, you‘ll need to:

decide which message, channel or supplier statuses you want to receive
prepare an endpoint URL for your integration

If you’re using NHS Notify MESH

You’ll need to:

Set up your MESH mailboxes (opens in a new tab) and make a note of their IDs.
Decide which reports you want when you get reports on how your messages perform.

3. Confirm your setup to get access to our integration environment

You must confirm how you’ll be set up with NHS Notify using our online form so we can prepare your integration environment to meet your needs.

Only complete the online form and confirm your setup if you’ve been invited to onboard.

Confirm your setup with NHS Notify

Before you confirm your setup

In the form you’ll be asked to:

Confirm your use case

You can only use NHS Notify if your organisation or service sends messages that are:

Provide your message sender names

When you send messages you’ll need to tell your recipients who your messages are from by creating message sender names.

Before you provide your message sender names, you should understand more about:

Provide more detail about your messages and how they’ll be sent

You’ll be asked if your organisation or service will:

have finished drafts of the messages you want to send
send NHS App messages and if so, which links and URLs you’ll include
send letters in other languages and if so, which languages
send letters in accessible formats and if so, which formats
use Personal Demographics Service (PDS) fields
have your PDS test data ready
use custom personalisation fields
have test data prepared for your custom personalisation fields

The form will also ask for the routing plans that you want to use for your messages.

Tell us who will create and submit templates

You do not need to do this if you send direct messages and use free-text inputs.

When you get access to NHS Notify’s integration environment, you’ll need to create and submit your templates. These templates will be used as the messages you send when you go live.

To access this feature, you must nominate someone in your organisation or service to sign in with NHS Notify. This is because creating and submitting templates is only available to one person in an organisation or service at this time.

To sign into NHS Notify you must have a Care Identity (CIS2 authentication). If you do not have a Care Identity, we can help you create one.

Give accurate estimates on your message volumes and frequency

We need to understand how many messages you need to send and how often to set up your integration environment.

You’ll need to provide:

how many messages you want to send per day
the maximum amount of messages you might send per day

After you submit the form, it will be reviewed by NHS Notify’s onboarding team.

They’ll contact you to either:

ask you about some of the answers you provided
provide access to NHS Notify’s integration environment

4. Build your integration

Once you get access to our integration environment, you can start building your integration with NHS Notify API or NHS Notify MESH.

How you build your integration to meet your needs is your responsibility.

If you’re sending campaign or event based messages, you need to create and submit your templates during this step. You will also need to approve your messages before we send them.

5. Complete integration testing

You’ll need to complete integration testing to make sure you’re ready to start sending messages with NHS Notify.

You’ll be responsible for:

assigning someone to manage and complete your testing
completing testing in our integration environment
how long your testing will take
specific NHS App message testing (if you’re using the NHS App)

Your onboarding manager will share advice on how to carry out testing when you reach this step.

You can start testing earlier using our Sandbox environment or by using free-text inputs with NHS Notify API or NHS Notify MESH.

6. Apply to go live

You’ll need technical or developer support to complete tasks in this step. They must also be ready to support the go live process.

When you’re ready to go live, contact your onboarding manager.

They’ll ask you to:

send them your SCAL
sign our connection agreement if you’re a non-NHSE organisation

If you’re using NHS Notify API

Your onboarding manager will ask for your:

production (PROD) application name
PROD application ID
consumer organisation name
JWKS resource URL (if you’re self-hosting)
key ID for JWKS and public key (if NHS Notify is hosting your keys via APIM)

If you’re using NHS Notify MESH

Your onboarding manager will ask for your PROD Mesh Mailbox ID.

Before you go live

Once we’ve received your details, you’ll need to:

complete smoke testing, with support from NHS Notify and your technical team
discuss your rollout or implementation plan with us

We will:

check your SCAL and confirm all assurance is complete
set you up in the production environment
work with you to support your rollout or implementation plan
agree a go live date with you

7. Go live

On your go live date, you can start making requests via API or MESH to send messages with NHS Notify.

After you go live

NHS Notify will setup a series of early service support calls with you to check your integration is performing as expected.

If you need help after these calls, contact support.