When you get a notification that requires a response, who it’s from can matter as much as what it’s about. So getting a response and not recognizing the sender can send alarm bells. We’ve all been conditioned to not open emails or answer phone calls from people we don’t recognize. Our new Sender Override feature helps to alleviate the confusion.

xMatters messages can also come through texts, web notifications, mobile push notifications, and more. Often messages are automated by integrations between xMatters and one of our strategic partners. For instance, you might be notified by a monitoring solution like Splunk or New Relic. You might be notified by an incident management tool like JIRA, or by a service desk solution like ServiceNow or JIRA ServiceDesk. Maybe you’re using a ChatBot service like Slack or ServiceNow Roombot.

Without knowing whether a message is automated from an integration or from a person, it’s difficult to know how to respond. You could ask questions to a person, but might only acknowledge receipt to an automated message. So it’s important that you can customize the send names not only for emails but for all communication channels. And now you can.

How it works
When you send a notification, you can set the sender override field. The contents you set then appear anywhere in the web and mobile UI where it says who sent the notification.

When added to the form layout, the Sender Overrides section allows you to specify the following values for notifications:

• Caller ID: allows you to override the caller ID displayed for voice notifications. Use of this functionality must follow the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009. Caller ID overrides are only supported for use with the Voxeo service provider. It is not compatible with SIP or the conference bridge feature.

• Display Name: allows you to customize the name associated with a notification or event. The display name is shown as the sender of notifications in the xMatters inbox, the mobile apps, and for email notifications. The display name is also displayed in the Events report, Events widget and Properties report in the xMatters web user interface, and in the Events report in the xMatters mobile apps.

By setting the sender information to meaningful values, you can help recipients identify that the notification has been sent from xMatters, and also help prevent messages from being marked as spam or junk mail. Learn more from xMatters Help.

What prompted this change?
The sender override field existed only in the from field of an email. But that change wouldn’t render in the web interface, mobile app, SMS, reports, or event widgets.

We think you’re going to appreciate how this functionality can be used to easily identify the events created by your integrations, instead of having those events appear to have come from a user, or having to create special users in your system with integration names. It goes directly our commitment to our customers:

• You should quickly and intuitively understand your notification and who it’s from
• You should have the flexibility to control your environment

If you have suggestion for improving your xMatters experience, please contact your success manager.

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