Message plans
Use message plans to tell us how to send messages to your recipients. You can choose which message channels to use and in what order.
You’ll soon be able to set up message plans yourself in your NHS Notify account. We’ll no longer need to set these up for you.
Choosing your message order
You can choose from a list of pre-defined message plans.
For example: NHS App, email, text message, letter.
How fallbacks work If we cannot deliver a message through your first choice, we automatically try the next channel in your message plan.
A fallback happens if:
- the recipient does not have valid contact details for a channel
- the message is not read or delivered within a certain amount of time
- the message fails to send for a technical reason
We’ll stop sending messages once a chosen channel is successful.
For example, you might try to send an NHS App message first. If the recipient reads the message within 24 hours, no further messages get sent. If the recipient does not read the first message within 24 hours, we’ll then try to send an email.
Linking your templates
You can choose specific templates for each channel in your message plan.
Contact details
We check the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) for each recipient’s contact details before we start sending messages.
If we do not have a contact detail for a specific channel, we’ll skip that channel and move to the next one in your message plan.
We only check for contact details once at the start. We do not re-check PDS each time there is a fallback.