How does the “Allow Duplicates” setting for a group affect recipient notifications and fill counts?

The Group Details page has a setting, “Allow Duplicates”, that determines whether the group can have the same recipient listed more than once. How does this setting affect the number of notifications delivered to a recipient within nested groups, and how does it affect fill counts?

The Allow Duplicates check box controls whether the member of a group can be added to the escalation timeline more than once, and whether group members can receive more than one notification for an alert.

There are three basic rules to consider when determining how the allow duplicates setting affects recipients within a group:

• The “Allow Duplicates” setting for a group applies to all nested group recipients within that group.
• Notifications are determined to be duplicates at the alert level, not at the group level.
• Notifications are only considered duplicates if a duplicate live notification exists. Therefore, any delayed notifications set for delivery are not factored into the determination. This includes device delays; if a user's device has a delay that extends beyond the life of a notification, they might receive a duplicate notification even when duplicates are not allowed.

This article uses a series of examples to illustrate how the allow duplicates setting affects notification delivery to recipients in nested groups, and how it affects the fill counts.

Note: The xMatters Inbox and the xMatters mobile app Inbox display only one notification per alert, even if a user receives duplicate notifications for the same alert on their other device types.

For more information about this setting and on how to turn it on or off for a group, see the online help.

Notification delivery examples

The following notification delivery examples use three groups (Support DNA, Operations, DNA, and Engineering DA) and one user (Mary McBride) to illustrate the rules above and the situations in which they apply. The Engineering AD group allows duplicates (hence the "AD" portion of the name), while Support DNA and Operations DNA do not allow duplicates (hence the "DNA" part of the name).

• Support DNA consists of a single recipient, Mary McBride.
• Operations DNA consists of two recipients, Support DNA and Mary McBride.
• Engineering AD consists of two recipients, Support DNA and Operations DNA.

The recipient tree for Engineering AD would resemble the following:

Engineering AD
--> Support DNA
      --> Mary McBride
--> Operations DNA
      --> Mary McBride
      --> Support DNA
            --> Mary McBride

Example 1:

A message is created with the following recipients:

• Mary McBride
• Operations DNA
• Engineering AD

The message targeting these recipients is delivered as follows:

--> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED

 --> Operations DNA
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - not notified
       --> Mary McBride - not notified

 --> Engineering AD
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
       --> Operations DNA
            --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
            --> Support DNA
                  --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED

Mary would receive four notifications for this alert:

• One notification for being directly targeted as a recipient for the notification.
• Three notifications for being targeted as a member of Engineering AD. The allow duplicates setting of this group applies to the nested group recipients within it.
• Mary would not receive any notifications for being targeted as part of Operations DNA because she has already been notified for this alert, and this group does not allow duplicates.

Example 2:

A message is created with the following recipients:

• Operations DNA
• Engineering AD

The message targeting these recipients is delivered as follows:

--> Operations DNA
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - not notified
       --> Mary McBride - not notified

--> Engineering AD
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
       --> Operations DNA
            --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
            --> Support DNA
                  --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED

Mary would receive three notifications for this alert:

• Mary would not receive any notifications for being targeted as a member of Operations DNA because duplicates are determined at the alert level, and she is being notified for the alert as a member of Engineering AD.
• Three notifications for being targeted as a member of Engineering AD. The allow duplicates setting of this group applies to the nested group recipients within it.

Example 3:

The message is repeated with the same recipients:

• Operations DNA
• Engineering AD

This time, a delay is set as indicated for the Engineering AD group. The notifications are delivered as follows:

--> Operations DNA
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - not notified
       --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED

--> Engineering AD
      (5-minute delay)
       --> Support DNA
             --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
       --> Operations DNA
            --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED
            --> Support DNA
                  --> Mary McBride - NOTIFIED

Mary would receive four notifications for this alert:

• One notification for being targeted as a member of Operations DNA. In this example, the 5-minute delay in the Engineering AD group timeline means notifications from this group would not be factored in when Mary is targeted as a member of Operations DNA. She is not notified by the Support DNA child group because she has already been notified in the parent group.
• Three notifications for being targeted as a member of Engineering AD. The allow duplicates setting of this group applies to the nested group recipients within it.

Fill counts examples

The following fill counts examples use the following groups:

• Security DNA consists of a single recipient, Thomas Little
• Database AD consists of a single recipient, Thomas Little

The Security DNA group does not allow duplicates and the Database AD group allows duplicates.

Example 1:

A message is sent with the following recipients:

• Thomas Little
• Security DNA

The notification goes to Thomas Little directly, not via his group membership in the Security DNA group. Any response from Thomas Little counts toward the message's additional fill count and not toward the Security DNA group's fill count.

Example 2:

A message is sent with the following recipients:

• Thomas Little
• Database AD

Thomas Little would receive two notifications: one directly, and one via his membership in the Database AD group. If Thomas Little responded to both notifications, one response would count against any additional fill count for the message, and the other response would count against the fill count for the Database AD group.

xMatters Reference

JDN-1133, DOC-6718