Notifications — Channels, Defaults & Opt-outs

Notifications — Channels, Defaults & Opt-outs

1. What it is

The notification system delivers messages to employees across six channels — in-app, email, SMS, push, voice, and Microsoft Teams — with a layered settings hierarchy that lets admins enforce business-wide policies while still giving employees control over non-critical categories. Every app in the platform publishes through a single orchestration service, so one set of admin controls governs all notification behaviour across all apps.

• Enablement: Notifications are a platform-level capability, not a licensed app. Every tenant has them from day one. Individual channels (SMS, push, voice, Teams) require separate enablement in Admin → General Settings.
• What it is not: This is not where you pause the AI or manage background tasks — those live in Admin → AI Operations. This is also not where you manage the Inbox UI layout; the Inbox is the reading surface, while this article covers the delivery and settings layer underneath it.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications (sidebar label: “Notifications”). This opens the main notification settings page with four tabs: Settings, Custom Rules, Analytics, and Logs.
2. Verify that your desired channels are enabled. Master toggles for email, SMS, and push live in Admin → General Settings → Email Settings / SMS Settings / Push Settings — not on the Notifications page itself. If a channel is off there, no notification of any kind goes out on that channel.
3. Review the per-feature notification toggles on the Settings tab. Each toggle controls whether a specific notification type fires at all. Toggles are grouped by feature area (Attendance, Schedule, Leave, Payroll, System & Broadcasts, Administrative).
4. Optionally configure Quiet Hours on the Settings tab: a business-wide window during which disruptive channels (push, SMS, voice) are suppressed. Default: off. When enabled, the default window is 22:00–08:00 in the business timezone.
5. Optionally configure Recipient Groups at Admin → General Settings → Groups. These reusable audience definitions target notifications, broadcasts, app visibility, and dashboard access. The platform seeds default groups on first use; you can create custom ones.
6. Employees manage their own preferences at Account Settings → Notifications. They see only the categories relevant to apps they can access.

Silent-until-paired: The per-feature notification toggles on the Settings tab only govern notifications for apps that are actually enabled for the tenant. If a toggle says “Leave Request Updates” but the Leave Management app is not turned on, nothing fires regardless of the toggle state. The view greys out toggles for apps not currently enabled.

3. How it fits together

Channels — The platform supports six delivery channels: in-app, email, SMS, push, voice, and Microsoft Teams. Each notification category defines which channels are on by default for new users. In-app and email are the baseline everywhere. Push is default-on only for time-sensitive categories (shift reminders, approvals, direct messages, safety alerts). SMS is default-on only for emergency alerts and on-call. Voice is never default-on — it is the final escalation step. Teams activates only when the business has connected a Microsoft Teams integration, and is default-on for Service Desk categories.

Settings hierarchy — When a notification fires, the platform evaluates a six-level cascade in strict order. The first level that blocks the notification wins:

1. User channel blocks — bounced email addresses, user-disabled channels (immediate rejection)
2. System-level settings — platform-wide toggles
3. Business notification settings — per-feature toggles on the admin Settings tab
4. User preferences — per-category, per-channel toggles each employee sets
5. User opt-outs — explicit per-category per-channel opt-outs
6. Quiet hours — applies only to disruptive channels (push, SMS, voice); in-app always lands, email cadence is handled by the digest system

Protected channels — The business notification policy can mark certain channels as protected for specific categories. Protected channels cannot be opted out of by employees. For example, the default policy protects SMS and email for emergency alerts, and SMS for shift changes and attendance alerts.

Escalation — For high/critical-severity events, the platform runs a three-step escalation: step 1 sends in-app and push (wait 5 minutes), step 2 adds SMS and email (wait 10 minutes), step 3 adds voice. The severity gate means escalation only fires for events marked high or critical. Admins can customise the escalation steps and timing.

Recipient groups — Reusable audience definitions used across notifications, broadcasts, dashboard targeting, wiki visibility, and app access. A group can be static (a hand-picked user list), dynamic (criteria-based: status, roles, locations, departments), shift-based (who is on shift, at a specific location, or within a radius), role-based, location-based, or org-tree-based (reports-under). Groups are shared across the platform — they are not per-app.

Digests — Notification emails can be delivered immediately, batched into a daily digest, or batched into a weekly digest. The default cadence is role-aware: for pure-FYI categories (libraries, wellness programs, company store), admins and managers default to daily digest while employees stay on immediate. Urgent and actionable emails always deliver immediately regardless of digest cadence.

4. Running it

Reviewing notification delivery

Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications → Logs tab. The unified log pulls from email audit logs, SMS usage records, push delivery logs, in-app notifications, and the suppression ledger. Filter by channel, status, recipient, or date. Each log entry shows why a notification was delivered or blocked — blocked entries name the level that stopped it in plain language (for example “disabled in the recipient’s notification preferences”, “quiet hours”, or “channel disabled at the business level”).

Creating custom notification rules

Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications → Custom Rules tab. A custom rule pairs a notification type and condition with one or more recipient groups, and optionally scopes to a specific location or role. You can set a threshold (converted to seconds internally) and enable or disable rules individually or in bulk.

Monitoring delivery health

Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications → Analytics tab. The dashboard shows email, SMS, and push delivery statistics with daily breakdowns, delivery rates, bounce rates, blocked-user counts, and escalation stats. From here you can retry soft-bounced emails, clear soft-bounce flags, or re-enable a user’s email or SMS delivery.

Managing recipient groups

Go to Admin → General Settings → Groups. Create a group, choose its type (static, dynamic, role, location, shift-based, etc.), and configure its membership criteria. For dynamic groups, set criteria across status, roles, locations, and departments. For shift-based groups, filter by schedule and shift status. Groups also support app visibility — you can control which marketplace apps are visible to members of a group and allocate licenses per group.

Enabling protective suppression

Two location-aware protections suppress disruptive channels for workers in specific situations:

• Right to disconnect — When Right to Disconnect (off-shift protection) is switched on at Admin → General Settings, frontline, hybrid, non-exempt, and hourly workers who are off shift have push, SMS, and voice held back. In-app notifications still land. Urgent dispatches bypass this.
• On-floor suppression — When a location has Quiet non-urgent notifications while on the floor turned on, workers clocked in at that location have push, SMS, and voice demoted to in-app only. This is for environments where phone use is restricted (shop floors, kitchens, production lines).

Both protections fail open — if the check cannot determine shift status, the notification delivers rather than being silently muted.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Per-feature notification toggles	Admin → Notifications → Settings	Varies per type (most on)	Whether a specific notification type fires at all
Daily email volume cap	Admin → Notifications → Settings	0 (disabled)	After this many emails/day, further non-urgent emails batch into a digest
Quiet hours enabled	Admin → General Settings	Off	Whether disruptive channels are suppressed during a time window
Quiet hours window	Admin → General Settings	22:00–08:00	The suppression window for push, SMS, and voice
Right to Disconnect (off-shift protection)	Admin → General Settings	Off	Suppresses disruptive channels for covered workers who are off shift
On-floor suppression	Per-location setting	Off	Suppresses disruptive channels for workers clocked in at that location
User availability check	Admin → Advanced Notification Settings	On	Whether notification targeting checks user availability
Skill requirements check	Admin → Advanced Notification Settings	On	Whether notification targeting checks skill match
Shift conflict check	Admin → Advanced Notification Settings	On	Whether notification targeting checks for shift conflicts
Prioritise primary locations	Admin → Advanced Notification Settings	On	Whether notification targeting prefers primary-location workers

Individual employees manage their preferences at Account Settings → Notifications, where they can toggle channels per category, set frequency (immediate, daily digest, weekly digest, or disabled), configure personal quiet hours, and control whether urgent notifications bypass their quiet hours (urgency override, default on).

6. More help

• Notifications FAQ — specific questions about limits, retention, suppression reasons, and troubleshooting
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about notifications from these articles.