Inform

Updated 8 months ago by Victoria

What is Inform?

Inform is our 1:many segmented messaging tool. It allows WorkStep users to reach their workforce via SMS and Email and segment messages based on location, role type, tenure, sentiment and any other attributes provided to WorkStep (e.g.: age, shift, DE&I information, etc.).

Who has access to Inform?

Inform is sold as an add-on for legacy RETAIN customers and included as part of the RETAIN Act add-on package for new customers starting January 16, 2023. If you are interested in getting Inform capabilities for your organization, please contact your account rep.

How to send an Inform message

1. Select Inform from your RETAIN tabs
2. Select “New Message” button

1. Select the “No Conditions applied” dropdown and then select “Edit Recipients”

1. Define the segment of recipients you’d like to receive your message based on your company’s custom attributes, favorability to a theme, employment tenure, location, and/or role type. If you anticipate utilizing this same segment again for future messages, you can toggle the save segment option on and name the segment.

   

2. Create your message by including both a subject line and message body. We recommend including the name of your organization in the subject line. You can include light formatting such as bolding or italicizing as well as link to any webpage, these options are at the bottom of the message composter.

To add a link, simply highlight the text you wish to hyperlink, select the link icon in the bottom left of the message composer, and add your desired link.

1. You can review the message by selecting the eye icon 
2. If the message looks good and you’re ready for recipients to receive it now, hit the send button. If you’d like for recipients to receive it at a later date, select the arrow next to send to schedule a day and time in the next seven days for the message to be automatically sent out. 

Scheduled  messages can be edited before they are sent. To do so, cancel the send, edit your message and then reschedule for when you would like it to go out.

1. Once your message has been sent, it will be visible in the sent message folder where you can start to see analytics populate for the message. 

V1 Key Features

Segment Builder: 

• Summary: To define a segment of the company’s existing workforce based on permanent attributes (custom or categorized), dynamic attributes (ie: favorability) and dependent attributes (ie: term reasons), events in platform (ie: alert categories) – 
  • Permanent attribute: Company’s existing filters/attributes. This includes standard attributes like role type and location as well as custom attributes such as DE&I attributes and shifts.
  • Dynamic attribute: Favorability to a theme in the last 90 days
    • Options are just unfavorable (1-3) or favorable (4-5), cannot select both options
      • If an employee has responded to more than one question associated with a single theme in the last 90 days, average the responses to determine whether sentiment for that theme for that employee is either favorable or unfavorable
      • Time range will be predefined for employers, for v1 the only time range option is last 90 days
      • If an employee has responded to more than one check-in within 90 days, take the response from the most recent check-in
      • Option to segment on favorability across multiple themes
    • Employment tenure
      • Users can select custom tenure ranges by either days or year 
        • Neither a min or max tenure value field is required. If min tenure is left blank, that will assume 0 days tenure. 
    • Segments will exclude any hire with a termination date
    • Users are only able to create a segment from the employees within their scope
    • Users can only segment on the employees that have been imported through a hire and term report (ie: only the employees that receive retain check-ins)
    • Users will be able to create a segment that encompasses all of the employees within their scope (or for users with all access they could send a company-wide message assuming their entire company is uploaded to RETAIN)
    • All filters are ‘and’ based criteria
    • Employees are locked into a segment at the time that the message is scheduled to be sent (messages can be canceled prior to being sent, filters would have been re-run at time the message is scheduled to be sent again)
    • Users will have a count of employees that are included in the segment unless that count is below 3 employees to protect the confidentiality of employees' identity.
    • The count of employees encompasses all employees in that segment regardless of reachability 
  • Saved Segments: 
    • Users can name and save a specific segment to be used for other messages in the future
    • Saved segments can be edited, but edits will only apply to future uses of that segment and do not impact any scheduled or previously sent messages using that segment
    • Saved segments can be deleted. Deleting a saved segment will remove it from the list of named segments to be used in the future, but will have no impact on previous messages that have used that segment. 
    • We will still keep a record of the saved segment on the backend for auditing purposes. 
      • Saved segments will only be visible to the user that created the segment in V1 and subsequently only the user that created it will be able to edit or delete the saved segment. 

Broadcast Messenger:

• Summary: Allow users to build a custom message that can be sent to a defined segment.
• Message builder:
  • Allow employers to write a custom message
  • V1 includes basic rich text formatting (italics, bolding and named hyperlinks)
  • Any valid URL can be linked, including survey links or Always On links
  • Users will be able to include a custom subject line for email and will be shown as a message header for the web based message sent through SMS
  • One preview option for the message (shown formatted, exactly how the employee will view it)
  • Messages auto-save as they are created
  • Messages remain in a draft state until they are scheduled to be sent
  • Messages do not have a character limit (There is a 10MB limit per message in SES which is what we use to send emails, but that would require a LOT of text to hit)
  • Messages (whether viewed by email or web-based page) will include the company’s logo as a header. 
  • Messages do not include any default signatures
• Scheduling a message to be sent:
  • The list of recipients is locked in at the time the message is scheduled to be sent
  • Users can schedule the message to be sent ASAP (which would be when the next cron runs at 5 minute intervals) and up to 7 days out
  • Users can cancel the scheduled send up to 30 minutes before the scheduled time
  • When a scheduled message is canceled it can be edited and rescheduled
  • Editing the message would re-run the segments filter and may slightly change the list of employees 
• Sending:
  • Inform prioritizes sending through email except in cases where an email does not exist for that employee or they have previously unsubscribed from email, then it sends through SMS
  • Email includes an unsubscribe option that unsubscribes the hire from Inform emails ONLY (not from all WorkStep emails)
  • SMS includes a prompt to reply STOP to unsubscribe from Inform SMS ONLY (not from all WorkStep SMS)
  • For SMS for V1 we will send ONLY a link to a web-based rich-text message
  • The web based message URL is unique to both the recipient and the message but is a public URL
  • Emails are sent from no-reply@inform.workstep.com with the name WorkStep Inform as the sender
  • SMS is sent from the number: (833) 583-0338
  • There is no option to undo a send or to pull back a sent message once it goes out

Sent Messages: 

• Analytics:
  • For all sent messages with more than 3 recipients, users will be able to see the following metrics on each message: 
  • Delivered: # of hires in the segment where the message was successfully delivered (total recipients minus unreachable and no contact details)
  • Opened: # of hires in the segment that received the message and opened either the email or the web based message from SMS
  • Clicked: # of hires in the segment that received the message, opened it and clicked on any URL in the Inform message content (excludes unsubscribe link and other WorkStep links)
  • Unreachable: # of hires in segment where message either bounced (for a variety of reasons) or they have unsubscribed from Inform
  • No contact details: # of hires in segment with neither email nor phone number
• Recipient Conditions:
  • For all sent messages where at least one condition was applied to the segment, users will be able to see a receipt of the recipient conditions to describe the segment that the message was sent to
  • If no conditions were applied to the segment, it will simply state “No conditions applied” 
  • Because there is the ability to segment based off of favorability, we will not provide the exact list of recipients to users to protect the confidentiality of the

Permissions:

•  Users can either have Author or Viewer access to Inform – this is separate from the permissions they may hold on the rest of the platform
  • Authors are able to create, edit, send their own messages only. Authors can also view scheduled and sent messages from other users that have been sent or will be sent to any of the hires within their scope 
  • Viewers are able to view scheduled and sent messages that have been sent to at least one hire within their scope
  • Drafts and segments are not shared across users

Functionality not included in V1

• Embedded photos in the message
• Attachments to the message
• Including emojis in message body or subject line
• Language translation or segmenting off of preferred language
• Replies to an Inform message
• Ability to select how the message is delivered 

See Inform in action!

How did we do?

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