Notifications — Channels, Defaults & Opt-outs

Notifications — Channels, Defaults & Opt-outs

1. What it is

Every app on the platform sends its notifications through one shared delivery layer. One set of admin controls decides which notifications go out, on which channels, and when. Employees then tune their own preferences within what you allow.

There are six channels: in-app, email, SMS, push, voice and Microsoft Teams. Push reaches people two ways: the Workforce mobile app on a phone, and a web browser on a computer.

• Enablement: notifications are part of the platform, not a licensed app, so every organization has them. Each outbound channel has its own master switch, and browser notifications are off until an admin turns them on.
• What it is not: the notification bell and Inbox are where people read notifications. This article covers the delivery and settings layer underneath them.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → General Settings → General Settings and open the Email Notifications, SMS Settings and App Push Notifications cards. Each holds the master switch for its channel. When a master switch is off, nothing goes out on that channel, whatever anyone’s preferences say.
2. To reach people on their computers, open App Push Notifications and turn on Send notifications to browsers in the Browser notifications card. It only appears while the master push switch above it is on, because browser notifications are a push channel.
3. Still on that page, press Send a test to this browser. Your browser may ask for permission first. A notification arriving confirms the setup works on your computer.
4. Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications. The Settings tab holds the per-notification switches, grouped by area (Attendance & Time Tracking, Schedule Management, Leave & Time Off and so on). Review them, then press Save All Settings.
5. Optionally set up Groups at Admin → General Settings → Groups. If you have none yet, Load Default Groups creates a starter set.
6. Tell your people where their own settings live: Account Settings → Notifications.

Two things silently do nothing until a second thing is set:

• Browser notifications need both halves. The admin switch only makes the offer available. Each person must then press Turn on in their own browser before anything reaches it.
• Per-notification switches follow the app. The Settings tab hides areas whose app is not turned on for your organization. A leave switch does nothing until Leave Management is enabled.

3. How it fits together

Channels and their defaults. Each notification category (a type of message, such as shift reminders or approvals) has default channels for people who have not changed anything:

• In-app is on almost everywhere, and email for most categories.
• Push is on by default only for time-sensitive categories: shift reminders, approvals, direct messages, safety alerts and similar.
• SMS is on by default only for emergency alerts, on-call, and job offers sent to candidates. A person can switch SMS on for more types in Account Settings → Notifications — among them Shift Reminders and Open Shifts (a new or urgent open shift, when Shift Marketplace’s SMS Notifications setting is on). Ask AI can tell anyone which types can come by text and whether texts reach them.
• Voice is never on by default. It is reserved for the last step of an escalation.
• Microsoft Teams works only once your organization has connected Teams. It is then on by default for Service Desk help requests and change management.

Phone push vs browser push. Both count as the push channel. A person’s push preference, quiet hours and the protections below apply to both in the same way. The difference is how a device gets registered:

• A phone registers when the person opens the Workforce mobile app.
• A computer registers when the person accepts the browser offer. While browser notifications are on, people see a banner reading “Get notifications on this computer.” with Turn on and Not now. The browser’s own permission prompt opens only after they press Turn on, never on page load.
• The banner never appears on a phone, where the mobile app carries push.
• Browser notifications follow the signed-in person. When someone signs out, that browser stops receiving their notifications, so a shared computer does not show one person’s alerts to the next.

The order checks run in. When a notification is about to go out on a channel, the platform checks in this order. The first check that says no wins:

1. The person’s own blocks — an email address that bounced, or a channel they switched off entirely
2. The channel’s master switch for your organization
3. The per-notification switch on the Notifications Settings tab
4. The person’s preferences and opt-outs for that category and channel
5. Quiet hours — push, SMS and voice only

A few messages that must arrive skip the person’s own preferences (check 4): emergency alerts, critical broadcasts, Service Desk after-hours alerts, Lone Worker SOS escalations, and emails the platform treats as required, such as password resets and sign-in codes. Some of them also go through quiet hours and through a channel the person switched off entirely, on the channels they were sent with:

• Emergency alerts: in-app, push, text and call. Their email still stops if the person turned email off.
• Service Desk after-hours alerts: in-app, and push or text as the team set them. Their email copy follows the person’s email settings.
• Critical broadcasts: in-app, email, push and call. A critical text still stops if the person turned texts off, replied STOP, or their number can’t receive texts.
• Lone Worker SOS escalations: text and call.

Reminders to acknowledge an emergency alert are not among them: they follow the person’s channel preferences. They are urgent, though, so like other urgent notifications they come through quiet hours.

Worked example: a shift reminder is going to an employee by push at 23:00. Push is on for the organization, the shift reminder switch is on, and the employee has push on for shift reminders. Business quiet hours run 22:00–08:00, so check 5 holds the push. The reminder still lands in their in-app notifications. Had the reminder been marked urgent, it would go through, because urgent notifications may break through quiet hours by default.

Groups. A group is a reusable audience: a named set of people you can target from notifications, custom rules, app access and many apps’ audience pickers. Groups are shared across the platform, not owned by one app. Types include a fixed list (Static), Reports under a manager, Attribute match (combine location, department, job level, tenure and more), job title or family, department, platform role, places (a location and beneath it, locations with an attribute, or a radius), and shift-based types whose membership changes through the day.

Being on shift. Two places let you target only people who are working:

• On the Groups page, an Attribute match group has Only people on shift, with the same windows: Off, Now, Today, Tonight, or Next hours after it sends.
• In the audience picker used when composing (for example in Communications), Only people on shift offers a time window: Now, Today, Tonight, or Next hours for a chosen number of hours. The audience is worked out again at every send, so it always reflects the current rota.

Digests. Email can arrive immediately, or batched into a daily or weekly digest. For purely informational categories (Libraries, Wellness Programs, Company Store and a few others), admins and managers default to a daily digest while employees stay on immediate. Anything urgent or asking for action still sends at once.

4. Running it

Seeing why someone did or didn’t get a notification

Go to Admin → General Settings → Notifications → Logs. It lists every email, SMS, in-app and push notification sent to your people. It also lists deliveries that were blocked, with the reason in plain words — for example the recipient’s own preferences, quiet hours, or a channel turned off for your organization. Export CSV downloads the filtered list.

Watching delivery health

The Analytics tab shows email, SMS and push delivery statistics: delivery rates, bounces, blocked recipients and escalations. From here you can retry soft-bounced emails, clear soft-bounce flags, or re-enable email or SMS for a person who was blocked.

Checking who has push

Admin → General Settings → General Settings → App Push Notifications → Registered Devices lists every registered phone and browser. You can filter it by iOS, Android or Browser, send a test to one device, or remove old ones.

Routing attendance alerts with custom rules

The Custom Rules tab is for attendance scenarios. Create New Rule pairs a notification type and condition with a threshold and one or more groups as Notification Recipients. You can also narrow a rule to one location or organizational role. Rules decide who is alerted; they do not block other notifications.

Escalating what’s urgent, and what’s overdue

Two escalation tools sit on the Settings tab:

• Escalation Defaults covers urgent events. When on, a high or critical event goes out step by step. By default that is in-app and push, then SMS and email after 5 minutes without acknowledgement, then voice after a further 10 minutes. Some apps (Broadcast, On-Call, Safety and others) can override this in their own settings.
• Overdue Escalation Ladder covers things people are late on: a policy, job description, course, Must-Read, onboarding task, credential or project to-do. The person who owes it keeps getting their app’s own reminders. The ladder decides who else hears, and when — for example their manager on the day it becomes overdue, then their manager’s manager a week later. The default ladder ships empty, so nothing escalates until you add steps. Each kind of item can use the default ladder, a custom one, or — where an app already escalated on its own — that app’s setting.

Protecting people’s time off

• Right to Disconnect (off-shift protection) holds non-urgent push, SMS and voice for frontline, hybrid, non-exempt and hourly workers while they are off shift. The messages wait in their in-app notifications. People with none of those classifications are not covered.
• Quiet non-urgent notifications while on the floor is a per-location setting under Admin → Organization → Locations. While someone is clocked in at that location, non-urgent push, SMS and voice become in-app only.

Urgent and emergency alerts pass through both. If the platform cannot tell whether someone is on shift, it delivers rather than mutes.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Master Push Notification Control	App Push Notifications	On	Whether any push goes out, to phones or browsers
Send notifications to browsers	App Push Notifications → Browser notifications	Off	Whether people are offered browser notifications, and whether browsers receive push
Per-notification switches	Notifications → Settings	Most on	Whether that notification type is sent at all
Max emails per recipient per day	Notifications → Settings → Daily Email Volume Cap	15	Past this many a day, a person’s further non-urgent emails go into a digest; 0 turns the cap off
Enable Escalation System	Notifications → Settings → Escalation Defaults	On	Whether high and critical events escalate step by step
Overdue Escalation Ladder	Notifications → Settings	Empty	Who hears about overdue items, and when
Enable Business Quiet Hours	Notifications → Settings	Off	Whether push, SMS and voice are held during the quiet window
Quiet Hours Start / End	Notifications → Settings	22:00 / 08:00	The quiet window, in your organization’s time zone
Right to Disconnect (off-shift protection)	Notifications → Settings	Off	Holds non-urgent disruptive channels for covered workers who are off shift
Quiet non-urgent notifications while on the floor	Each location’s settings	Off	Demotes disruptive channels to in-app for people clocked in there

The master switches for email and SMS live on their own cards under General Settings, beside App Push Notifications.

Employees manage their own settings at Account Settings → Notifications. They can switch channels per category, choose each category’s Email Frequency (Immediate, Daily Digest, Weekly Digest or Disabled), pick which email address notifications go to, and add exceptions for individual categories. Browser notifications are turned on from the banner in their browser, not from this page.

6. More help

• Notifications FAQ — limits, retention, suppression reasons and troubleshooting
• Communications FAQ — Must-Read due dates, overdue Must-Reads and on-shift audiences
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about notifications from these articles.