Notifications and automations¶
Half of AppToMe's work happens without anyone pressing a button: reminders going out, checklists being born, requests expiring, tasks lapsing. This chapter says what happens on its own, when, and to whom — it is the page to open when someone says "the notification did not reach me".
The volunteer's notification centre tells the same story from the receiving side.
What AppToMe does on its own, and how often¶
The automations run on two clocks, not at the exact moment of the event.
Every few minutes¶
A frequent check — in the order of minutes, not hours — deals with everything tied to the shift under way:
| Automation | What it does |
|---|---|
| Creating the checklists | creates the checklists provided by the shift type and by the vehicles assigned, and warns those on shift with a task |
| Expiry of the checklists | marks as expired every checklist not certified beyond its type's late tolerance |
| Entrance reminder | warns those on shift who have not clocked in yet |
| Exit reminder | warns those who left an entrance open, from 5 minutes after the end of the shift or lesson |
| Activities left open | warns those who closed their shift less than 24 hours ago leaving an activity without an end or without final kilometres, and those on duty right now on a shift that has open ones |
| Expiry of the shift swaps | moves to expired every request still hanging beyond its deadline, or when the shift involved has started, and warns both people |
| Expiry of the vehicle bookings | closes the requests whose slot has now passed and warns whoever made them |
Expiries are not a bureaucratic detail: without this round a shift swap request would stay pending forever, and nobody would know nothing came of it.
Once a day, in the morning¶
The daily round starts early in the morning and looks at the following day:
| Automation | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shift reminders | warns whoever has an approved availability on a shift tomorrow |
| Lesson reminders | warns the approved subscribers of a course with a lesson tomorrow; this one also arrives by email |
| Certification expiry notice | warns the person and the certification's managers at the notice days set on the certification, each with its own list; every warning goes out once per expiry and starts over on renewal; this too by email |
| Lapsing of the tasks | recalculates the tasks of whoever has a certification that just expired, with three days' tolerance backwards |
| Vehicle deadline reminders | only with the Vehicle management module: warns the deadline's responsible person, the vehicle's referent and the general referents at the notice days; every warning goes out once per deadline; by email too |
| Automatic vehicle block | only with Vehicle management: puts out of service the vehicles with an expired deadline of the types chosen in Put out of service when expired |
| Vehicle summary | on Mondays, only with Vehicle management: deadlines within 30 days, open faults and vehicles out of service, to the general referents, by email too. If there is nothing to report, it does not go out |
| Accounting deadline reminders | only with the Accounting module: warns administrators and those with Can manage Accounting of the filing of the annual report with the RUNTS, 60, 30 and 7 days before, and of the renewal of membership fees, 30 and 7 days before; every warning goes out once per deadline; by email too |
| Cleaning the logs | deletes the audit traces older than the retention period (90 days as standard), including those of accesses to sensitive data |
The volunteers' card has a round of its own, about every quarter of an hour: whoever has just finished a shift finds the card born or grown within about a quarter of an hour, with a push notification and never an email.
What is not automatic¶
It is worth saying, because it is the source of half the wrong expectations:
- availabilities do not approve themselves, if the calendar asks for approval: they stay there until someone decides;
- the Access requests to the organization wait for you;
- non-compliant checklists do not open any case: they generate an alert, the assessment is yours;
- a fault report does not put the vehicle out of service, not even when it says the vehicle cannot go out: the staff decide, from the notification;
- an uncovered shift does not send reminders one after another: the only invitation goes out if you send it from the shift organizer.
The three rules of notifications¶
Almost every question about "why did it not arrive" is explained by these.
Every alert goes out once only. Every reminder is marked as sent on the row it refers to — the availability, the lesson, the clocking, the certification. There are no second reminders, not even if the first stayed unread. The second safety net is you.
An account is needed. A registry record with no linked user receives nothing: no notifications, no board, no reminders. It is the most frequent cause of the volunteer who "never receives anything". Someone with an email address but not yet an account in the app receives only the email.
Notifications are per organization. Counter, list and read status are separate for each organization the person belongs to.
Which channels it arrives on¶
Every notification can travel on three channels — push, email, SMS — and whoever receives it has the last word: in their own profile preferences they can switch off each of the three, and a channel that is off is not used even for the alerts that provide for it. They all stay in the app's notification centre anyway.
Title and text are rendered in the recipient's language, not in that of whoever triggered the alert: in a mixed organization everyone reads in their own.
If a push or an email cannot go out, AppToMe retries within the hour; past that window the attempt is not repeated, but the notification stays readable in the app. Notifications are kept for a long time — a little over three months — and then deleted: the notification centre is not an archive.
Who receives what¶
Useful when you have to decide whether an action "shows" or passes in silence.
| Event | Who is warned |
|---|---|
| Shift created | the volunteers with one of the tasks required, if availabilities are open |
| Shift changed or cancelled | whoever has an availability on that shift |
| New availability, or availability withdrawn | the calendar's managers |
| Availability approved, rejected or changed | the volunteer concerned |
| First time on a task | the managers, as a signal to pay attention |
| Availability request (invitation) | the person invited |
| Shift swap | the two people involved at every step; the managers when approval is needed |
| Booking of a vehicle | the vehicle managers at the request, whoever booked at the decision and when a manager edits or cancels their booking |
| Vehicle put out of service, or dates of the stop changed | the vehicle managers except whoever did it, by email too; whoever has a booking on that vehicle in the period of the stop. See Vehicles |
| Problem reported on a vehicle | the vehicle's referent and the general referents, except whoever reported it; by email too if the vehicle cannot go out. See Vehicle management |
| Post on the board | the recipients calculated on the post |
| Comment or reaction | the author of the post or of the comment |
| Checklist not compliant, expired, or with a note | the checklist managers |
| Membership accepted or rejected | the person who had asked |
News are not in this table: they leave from the administration panel and reach everyone on three channels at once. See Board.
When a notification does not arrive¶
In order of actual frequency:
- the person has no linked account in the registry;
- the alert had already gone out once for that row;
- the channel is off in the person's preferences, or push permission was denied on the phone;
- the post's filter did not include them, or they joined the group after publication;
- the condition was not true: the shift reminder, for instance, does not go out for availabilities that are not approved;
- little time has passed: the periodic check has not run yet.
Before giving a notification up for lost, ask them to open the notification centre of the right organization: very often it is there, and it is the push that was not seen.