A channel is one way of reaching a person. Every notification is offered to each of its recipients on every channel that applies, unless the sender restricts the channels. This page compares the channels; each has its own page.
Overview
| Channel | Id | Needs | Quiet hours | Person can switch it off | Set up by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-app | inapp | A member account | No | No | Always on |
mail | An e-mail address | No | Yes (Email notifications) | Platform sender, or your mail settings | |
| SMS | sms | A phone number | Yes | Yes (SMS notifications) | Your SMS provider settings |
| Push | push | A registered browser or app install | Yes | Yes (Push notifications) | Push Settings |
| Chat apps | one id per platform | A linked chat account | Yes | Yes (per platform) | Chat platforms |
Which recipients reach which channels
What a channel can deliver depends on how the recipient is named:
| Recipient named as | In-app | Push | Chat apps | SMS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A member (user) | Yes | Yes, if they registered a device | Yes, if they linked an account | No | No |
| A role (Owners, Admins, Members) or a team | As for each member | As for each member | As for each member | No | No |
| An e-mail address | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| A phone number (flows only) | No | No | No | No | Yes |
So in this release:
- An alarm rule that names a role reaches those people in the bell, by push and in their chat apps. To get e-mail, add the address as an e-mail recipient (
{ "kind": "email", "email": "…" }), for example an operations mailbox. - SMS is sent only to phone numbers named in a flow’s Notify block. Alarm rules and the Rules card cannot name phone numbers.
See Alarm notifications in depth and Notifications from rules and flows.
Restricting channels
A sender may name channels by their ids, for example ["inapp", "mail"]. Then only those are used. Without it, every channel the recipient allows is used. Chat channels have one id per platform: the platform’s name in lower case.
Switched off for the organisation
An administrator can turn whole channels off:
| Channel | Switch |
|---|---|
| SMS | Settings > SMS > Enable SMS Notifications |
| Push | Settings > Push Settings > Push notifications |
| Chat apps | Chat platforms > Disconnect (per platform) |
A channel that is off is never used, not even for critical alarms.
Quiet hours
Quiet hours are a window of whole hours (for example 22 to 7) during which SMS, push and chat messages are not sent. They are worked out in each recipient’s own time zone (My Profile > Preferences > Timezone). In-app and e-mail are never held back: a late e-mail would only arrive out of order. A notification held back by quiet hours is not sent later on that channel; it is still in the bell.
Quiet hours are an organisation-wide setting. There is no page for them in this release; they are off unless your organisation has had them set. Critical alarms ignore them by default.
Plans and quotas
E-mail and SMS count toward monthly quotas of your plan (emailSends, smsSends). A plan without SMS sends no SMS. See Usage and quotas. In-app, push and chat messages do not count.
In development
- The mobile app (notifications on phones, approvals on the phone) is in development. The push settings already mention app installs; nothing is sent to phones until the app is released.
- Registering a browser for push from the web app is in development. See Browser push.
- On-call rotations and escalation policies are not connected to IoT alarms. Use roles, reminders and severity rise instead.