What are Notifications
Notifications messages are sent to users with a Storefront Gateway action token that may require the user to complete a desired task and invoke a subsequent Process. You can integrate your own notification templates and provider(s) to send notification messages to the users that can be informational, or a request to the recipient to complete an action. The following are some examples of Notification Services when Storefront Gateway generates and delivers a notification to the user on the user’s contact channel, also know as the Preferred Notification Channel (PNC):- An anonymous user is required to verify ownership of an email address during their onboarding process. Storefront Gateway sends an email notification to the user with a one-time password (OTP), delivered by the service provider configured.
- An anonymous user selects a “Forgot Password?” option and completes the Recover ID Process. Storefront Gateway sends a notification, with an action token for the password reset, to the specified contact channel.
- An authenticated user removes one of their registered authN IDs from their profile. Storefront Gateway sends a notification to the user’s preferred contact channel to confirm that the authN ID was removed.
How Notification Services Work
Storefront Gateway references notification templates to construct and deliver notifications using the Storefront Gateway services configured within your tenant. The Storefront Gateway Notification Services use the following components to generate, dispatch/deliver notification messages:-
Notification Templates: Storefront Gateway stores Notification templates that are made up of text, HTML (email body file), and template fields. Each Storefront Gateway Process uses a set of templates to complete different task(s), The supplied email/SMS templates can be downloaded/modified with your organization’s message type/structure (i.e., token types) based on HTML & thymeleaf templates stored in Storefront Gateway service within your tenant.
When a user completes a Process step (e.g., verify ownership of an email address), the Process generates a notification by referencing the associated template(s), constructs the notification message, and delivers it.
Two types of templates are available based on the user’s contact channel type:
- SMS template(s) for sending notifications to a user’s mobile number.
- Email (SMTP) template(s) are constructed from two template files (header/body) for sending notifications to a user’s email address.
- Service Providers: The configured service provider(s) dispatches and delivers notification messages to the user on the specified notification channel (email/SMS). Storefront Gateway supports the integration of external provider(s) using your organization’s settings, in addition to the built-in provider services available in non-production environments for each channel type.
Manage Notification Services
Notification Services are managed from the Admin console > Brandingwhere you can manage service providers, templates and customize your themes/branding to be used in your notification messages. Use the Storefront Gateway Notification Service With out-of-the-box default settings, most Storefront Gateway Processes send both a long-form clickable link and a short-form custom OTP to the selected contact channel. Storefront Gateway controls what token types are sent on each channel type based on HTML & thymeleaf templates stored in the Storefront Gateway data store. The notification templates controls the message content (messaging, branding) as well as the token type (link, OTP, or both) based on the user’s channel type (email or mobile). These templates are set according to your business requirements during the initial onboarding and integration phase between your business and Storefront Gateway. For example, as a best practice, you can opt to send only clickable links through email notifications and only OTPs through SMS. Notification settings can be established for your organization as a part of the onboarding and discovery sessions between you and Storefront Gateway Support Services. Use your Notification Service (external) Storefront Gateway supports the MarketONE CSP Adapter API to provide large-scale Service Providers a method to leverage their existing notification system. When a user completes a Process, Storefront Gateway sends all of the relevant content (user information, redirect+token URL, custom token OTP) to your own notification delivery system via this API. Your notification system generates and sends the required notifications to the user’s contact channel. Whether using Storefront Gateway’s notification or your own external notification system, confirm what types of action tokens will be sent to the users, and build your client application UI pages accordingly. For example, if you’re only sending clickable links (long token URLs) to your users, then you don’t require any kind of OTP (short token) verification. Alternatively, if you’re only sending OTPs on one channel, but both a clickable link and OTP over a different channel, then you’ll need to support each channel-driven flow on the client application UI(s) Storefront Gateway’s built-in provider(s) are used for testing notification services in non-production environments such as PDT. To integrate your production environments, merchants integrate a custom external email/sms provider to process messages. Use Storefront Gateway Templates Storefront Gateway supplies default templates to download/upload and stores the templates that are dispatched/delivered with your configured provider service. See these topics for guidance managing and configuring your services:- Manage Email Templates
- Notification Service Email Templates
- Manage SMS Templates
- Notification Service SMS Templates
Use Cases
The use cases available for Notification services are:- Update SMTP (email) Notification Service
- Update SMS Notification Service