Utility Notices

The Utility Notices page lets you broadcast messages to your customers via EyeOnWater. This lets you alert customers to service outages, boil advisories, etc. by creating banners that appear across the top of the EyeOnWater web portal and on the screen of the EyeOnWater iOS and Android smartphone apps.

You can also send utility notices as push notifications to users of the EyeOnWater apps who have enabled push notifications on their smartphones. Push notifications, unlike banners, are broadcast even when the EyeOnWater app is not open and active.  

The first time you access the Utility Notices page, a “Welcome to Utility Notices” graphic is displayed.

After you create at least one utility notice, a paginated list of all notices gets displayed for easy management and reference.

In the example above, a single utility notice titled Planned Water Outage Oct. 17 – Oct. 19 has been created. Notice its Start and End dates are displayed along with the date the notice was last updated and name of the person who performed the update. In addition, the notice Status is shown as being Ended. Possible statuses are:

• Active – The notice is visible on the EyeOnWater web portal and on the EyeOnWater iOS and Android smartphone apps.
  Scheduled – The notice is not yet visible to customers because its start date is in the future.
• Ended – The notice is no longer visible because its end date is in the past or a user ended the notice early. 

Use the drop-down menu in the upper left to filter results by Status.

NOTE: Active status messages are displayed by default. After saving a draft message, All Messages are displayed.

Click the three vertical dots on the right to open a menu that lets you edit, end, or copy the corresponding notice.

TIP: Copy an existing notice to jumpstart the creation of new or similar notices.

Create a Banner
To create a banner, do the following:

1. 1. From the Utility Notices page, click Create Banner.By default, banners are visible to all your customers that use EyeOnWater.
   2. Use the Saved Filters drop-down menu to direct banners to the appropriate EyeOnWater customers based on Saved Filters created on the Monitor page.TIP: To send a utility notice to meters by Service_Point_Route, Location_Zip_Code, Meter_Size or other parameter(s) surfaced among the many Monitor page filters, select that filter or any group of filters, and create a Saved Filter using this process. When finished, the filter will be available in the Saved Filter drop-down menu. To remove your selection, click Clear Filter.
   3. Use the Date Range selectors to specify the days that the Notice will be active and visible to your customers.
   4. Enter a Title by typing in the Title box. Titles can be up to 100 characters in length.
   5. Enter your message in the Message box. Messages can be up to 990 characters.
      
      NOTE: While EyeOnWater is available in many languages, the system will not automatically translate your message to any of those languages.
      NOTE: The tip above the Message box includes a link that shows samples of how to use markdown to add bold face, italic and other formatting to your message.
   6. Click Preview to inspect your message before publishing it.

1. To send the message to your EyeOnWater smartphone app users as a push notification, check the Send Push Notification box.NOTE: Push notifications must be enabled on a user’s smartphone to appear even when the EyeOnWater app is not open or active.
   
   NOTE: For helpful guidelines, please see Push Notification Best Practices  and Push Notification Troubleshooting FAQ for CSRs.
2. Click Save as Draft to save the message without publishing it. Click Send to transmit the message. Click Cancel to clear your message.