notifications-admin/docs/index.md

About this document

This document is for public sector [?] developers, technical architects, and service managers who want to use the GOV.UK Notify platform to send notifications to users of their digital service.

About GOV.UK Notify

GOV.UK Notify is a cross-government platform, currently in beta, that lets government services and agencies [?] send notifications by sms or email.

There are two ways to send notifications:

• use the GOV.UK Notify web application
• integrate your web applications or back office systems with the GOV.UK Notify API

To find out more about GOV.UK Notify, see the Government as a Platform blog.

Before you start

To use GOV.UK Notify, you need:

• an email address from a local or central government organisation
• a mobile number for 2-factor authentication

Quick start guide to GOV.UK Notify

To get started:

1. Register for a GOV.UK Notify account. You will need your mobile phone for 2-factor authentication.
2. Add a new service.

At first your service will be in trial mode. In trial mode you will only be able to send test sms and email notifications to your own mobile number or email address. When you’re fully integrated and ready to go live, send a request to the GOV.UK Notify team.

3. Add a template so you can send sms and email notifications. You can personalise the template using double brackets for variables. For example:

Dear ((name))

Your ((item)) will expire on ((date)).

4. Upload a csv file containing a header row matching the variables in your template, and data rows with values to use for the variables.
5. Send an sms or email notification.
6. Create a new API key. This will be used to connect to the API.

You can provide all your developers with test keys so they can experiment in the Sandbox environment. But keep the number of keys for real integrations to a minimum number of people on your team.

Integrate the GOV.UK Notify API into your service

GOV.UK Notify provides an API that allows you to create text and email notifications and get the status of notifications you have sent.

API integration

There are two ways to integrate the API into your service:

• use a client library provided by GOV.UK Notify - there is currently a python library and more will be added in different languages
• develop your own integration to produce requests in the correct format

GOV.UK Notify uses JWT tokens for authentication and identification. GOV.UK Notify client library encodes and decodes JWT tokens when making requests to the GOV.UK Notify API. If you don't use this library, you must manually create tokens yourself.

A JWT token contains, in encrypted format:

• your service ID - identifies your service
• your API key (in JWT token terms this is called the client ID) - used to sign tokens during requests for API resources
• an indication of what you're trying to do - GET, POST, etc.
• the endpoint you're trying to access

Use the GOV.UK Notify web application to find your service ID and create API keys.

See authentication.py in the GOV.UK Notify Python client library for sample code to encode and decode JWT tokens.

Important: API keys are secret, so save them somewhere safe. Do not commit API keys to public source code repositories.

JWT tokens

JWT tokens have a series of standard and application-specific claims.

JWT standard claims:

{
  "typ": "JWT",
  "alg": "HS256"
}

GOV.UK Notify application-specific claims:

{
  iss: 'string', // service id
  iat: 0, // creation time in  epoch seconds (UTC)
  req: 'string', // signed request
  pay: 'string', // signed payload (POST requests only)
}

GOV.UK Notify API tokens sign the:

• request being made
• payload (for POST requests)

The signing algorithm is the HMAC signature, using the provided key SHA256 hashing algorithm.

Request signing is of the form HTTP METHOD PATH:

GET /notification/1234

Payload signing requires the actual payload to be signed, not the JSON object. Serialize the object first, then sign the serialized object.

API client libraries

GOV.UK Notify supports a python client library:

GOV.UK Notify Python client

This provides example code for calling the API and for constructing the API tokens.

API endpoints

You can use the GOV.UK Notify API to:

• send a notification
• retrieve one notification
• retrieve all notifications

To send a text notification:

POST /notifications/sms

{
  'to': '+447700900404',
  'template': 1, 
  'personalisation': {
    'name': 'myname',
    'date': '2016'
  }
}

To send an email notification:

POST /notifications/email

{
  'to': 'email@gov.uk',
  'template': 1,
    'personalisation': {
    'name': 'myname',
    'date': '2016'
  }
}

where:

• to is the phone number (required)
• template is the template ID to send (required)
• personalisation (optional) specifies the values to be used in your templates

The response will be:

{
   'data':{
      'notification': {
         'id':1
      }
   }
}

To retrieve the status of a single text or email notification:

GET /notifications/{id}

{
   'data':{
      'notification': {
         'status':'delivered',
         'created_at':'2016-01-01T09:00:00.999999Z',
         'to':'+447827992607',
         'template_type':'sms',
         'sent_at':'2016-01-01T09:01:00.999999Z',
         'id':1,
         'message':'...',
         'job_id':1,
         'sender':'sms-partner'
      }
   }
}

where:

• status is the the status of the notification; this can be sending, delivered, failed [change status in message above?]
• template_type is sms or email
• job_id is the unique identifier for the process of sending and retreiving the notification
• message is the content of message
• sender may be the provider [Do we want to say who is sending it?]

The above fields are populated once the message has been processed; initially you get back the response indicated above.

To get the status of all notifications:

GET /notifications

{
   'data':[{
      'notification': {
         'status':'delivered',
         'created_at':'2016-01-01T09:00:00.999999Z',
         'to':'+447827992607',
         'template_type':'sms',
         'sent_at':'2016-01-01T09:01:00.999999Z',
         'id':1,
         'message':'...',
         'job-id':1,
         'sender':'sms-partner'
      }
   },
   {
         'notification': {
         'status':'delivered',
         'created_at':'2016-01-01T09:00:00.999999Z',
         'to':'+447827992607',
         'template_type':'email',
         'sent_at':'2016-01-01T09:01:00.999999Z',
         'id':1,
         'message':'...',
         'job_id':1,
         'sender':'email-partner'
      }
   }...]
}

This list is split into pages. To scroll through the pages run:

GET /notifications?&page=2

GOV.UK Notify API code

The GOV.UK Notify API code is open sourced at:

GOV.UK Notify API

Functional testing

[Some info in Rosalie’s notes.]

Security

[Some info in Rosalie’s notes.]

Privacy