Adding e-mail address(es) to the ‘Contact Email Address’ field for Data Pools is optional however it is recommended for the reasons outlined below:

1. Why it is useful to add Contact Email address(es) to a Pool?

Adding Contact Mail address(es) to Pools (not to pool alerts) avoids confusion if you have multiple Pools. This is because only the e-mail addresses linked to the Pool, that triggers the Pool alert, are sent the alert.

2. The implications of setting up Pool alerts without adding Contact Email address(es) to Pools

Before the ‘Contact Email Address’ field was added to pools it was possible to create Pool alerts and add email addresses in to the ‘On Action Data’ field (i.e. specify the recipients to receive the pool alerts). 

This option is still available; however, problems can arise from doing it this way. If you create multiple Pool alerts with different e-mail addresses:
      i. All e-mail addresses will receive all pool alerts. 
ii. This is true even if the pool an email address is associated with has not consumed the amount of data needed to trigger the alert.

An example of a Mobile Manager platform with 2 customers and 2 pools:
i. ‘Customer A’ has Pool A. You want an alert to be sent to them when their pool reaches 50% data consumption.
ii. ‘Customer B’ has Pool B. You want an alert to go out when their pool reaches 75% data consumption.
iii. You create two Pool alerts:
 iv. You add ‘Customer A’ e-mail address(es) to the first alert.
  v. You add the email address(es) of ‘Customer B’ ‘to the second alert.

     vi. When one of the pools hits 50%, all e-mail addresses for both pools will receive an alert saying they have consumed 50%, even though the other pool has not consumed 50% of its data.

     vii. Also, when one of the pools hits 75%, all e-mail addresses for both pools will receive an alert saying they have consumed 75%, even though the other pool has not consumed 75% of its data.

3. The steps needed to benefit from adding Contact Email Address(es) to Pool(s) (not to pool alerts)

The following guide explains how the use of the Contact Email address(es) means that people will not receive misleading alerts i.e. an alert to say that their Pool has used a percentage of its available data when it hasn’t.

i. Add e-mail address(es) to the Pool when creating a new Pool.
ii. Create a new Pool alert in the Alerts section of Mobile Manager
iii. In the ‘On Action’ field select ‘Email
iv. In the ‘On Action Data’ field add: %poolEmail
v. If you want a notification to go out when the percentage of the pool consumed drops below the percentage specified, in the ‘Off Action’ select ‘Email’ again and then in the ‘Off Action Data’ again type: %poolEmail. ‘Off Action’ will normally only be relevant with aggregated pools if more SIMs are activated increasing the size of the pool or if bolt-ons are added to SIMs in other Pool types.

When you create a Pool alert using the token %poolEmail it is sent to all ‘Contact E-mail addresses’ linked to each pool when their specific pool uses the percentage of data specified in the alert. It is not possible to specify Pools or Customers to be excluded from specific Pool alerts.

5. Multiple customers associated with a single pool

If you intend the same Pool of data to be used by multiple customers (achieved in Mobile Manager by assigning multiple customers to the same Pool) we recommend that you create alerts that are only sent to you, not your customers.  This is because one customer may have used less data than another customer and then contact you to explain how so much data has been consumed.