Limit Number of on-call SMS Notifications

[Matthew Dever]

We have a requirement from a number of support teams who state that the number of SMS notifications (and frequency) are inconvenient and unproductive.  

I have scoured through ServiceNow Community posts that references "SMS", "text", "pages", "notifications", but nothing satisfied the requirements I need.

The basic ask: we need to be able to set X number of pages every Y minutes and up to Z number of pages (e.g. 1 page every 5 minutes with a maximum of 5 pages per incident) based on individual on-call group requirements.  We currently use a slight variation of the out-of-the-box "On-Call: Assign" workflow that actually triggers the "Send SMS notification" workflow activity.

result = getRecipientsAndNumberToSendFrom();

/**
 * Generate the object that will configure what number to send
 * the SMS from and to what additional phone numbers or users
 * the SMS should be sent.
 *
 * @returns {{notify_number: *, users: Array, groups: Array, numbers: Array}}
 */
function getRecipientsAndNumberToSendFrom() {
	var recipientsDetails = {
		notify_number   : getNotifyNumber(),    // the sys_id of the notify number
		users           : [],                   // array of user ids
		groups          : [],                   // array of group ids
		numbers         : [workflow.scratchpad.smsPreference]                    // array of E164 compliant phone numbers
	};
	return recipientsDetails;
}

/**
 * Function to determine the Notify Number to call from
 *
 * Note, THIS LOGIC SHOULD PROBABLY CHANGE as it will
 * return the first notify number which may not even
 * be a SMS capable number.
 *
 * @returns {*}
 */
function getNotifyNumber() {
	// if this workflow is running in the context
	// of the call table, use the notify number
	// associated
	if (current.getTableName() == 'notify_call')
		return current.notify_number;

	var onCallNotifyNumberSysId = getOnCallNotifyNumberSysId();
	if (onCallNotifyNumberSysId)
		return onCallNotifyNumberSysId;

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.