Question:

Why are my notifications taking longer than expected to be sent?

Why does my broadcast take over fifteen minutes to complete when I set the wait time between cycles and paths to none?

Answer:

When Everbridge Mass Notifications (MN) sends messages to your contacts using multiple delivery methods (SMS, email, phone, etc.), each method is attempted in the order configured for your notification, one at a time. The MN Interval between cycles setting will determine how long Everbridge waits before starting the next notification cycle per contact (retrying the first delivery path), after the last delivery path has been attempted (per contact). Setting the interval between cycles value to 0 will prevent a delay between cycles, but does not affect the amount of time it takes to send notifications to each of the paths configured for your contacts (the time from the start to the end of one cycle).

The MN Interval between delivery methods setting will determine how long Everbridge waits before sending the message to the next path (delivery method) for your contact after each message is sent. Setting the interval between delivery methods value to 0 will prevent a delay between messages sent to multiple paths per contact, but does not affect the amount of time it takes to send a message per path configured for your contacts.

Messages sent to text paths such as SMS and email are usually completed in just a moment, but voice paths can take around 60-90 seconds to complete, not including ring time. Consider the following example to see how notifications can take several minutes to complete:

1. An MN notification is configured with zero wait time between cycles, and three cycles are selected.
2. The wait time between paths is also set to zero, and one of your contacts has five voice delivery methods configured.
3. The notification is sent with the option to Confirm enabled, and the contact mentioned above does not confirm any of the voice messages.
4. If it takes an average of ninety seconds to complete a voice message delivery, plus an average of ten seconds of ring time per voice message, then this broadcast will take at least twenty-five minutes to complete!
   • (100 seconds per message X 5 attempts per cycle X 3 cycles = 1500 seconds = 25 minutes)