Summary

For Backstage users, the Notifications module can be used to send information to the participants of a workspace. It will contain a list of all created notifications that have either been sent, or are scheduled to be sent.

For app users, the Notifications module in the workspace will be used to receive the notifications sent from Backstage, as well as all notifications that are sent automatically from other modules within the workspace. These include meeting invites or updates, connection requests, feed, polling and form notifications.

Notifications in Backstage

Listing notifications

In the List notifications tab, Backstage users can review all notifications that were created in Backstage and that either have been sent, or are scheduled to be sent to participants.

Creating and sending notifications

In the Create notifications tab, Backstage users can draft any notifications to be sent to the participants.

The following information can be added to the notification, and will be seen by the participants when the notification is received:

• Sender: for the participants, this corresponds to "who" this notification is sent from.
• Subject: this is the subject of the notification.
• Message: This is the actual body text that will be contained in the notification. It can be formatted in markdown or HTML style.
• Send at: This option allows Backstage users to either send the notification immediately (by ticking the Now box) or to schedule the notification to be sent at a later time and/or date.
  To note, all times in Backstage are by default set to the event's time zone, however ticking the "Send in users' timezone" box will instead ensure that the notification is delivered at the recipients local time.
• Expire at: This is the time and date at which the notification will disappear from the participant's Notifications module in the workspace.
• Sender photo: This is used to upload a picture representing the sender of the notification.
• Targeting: The two last fields in the Create notifications tab are used to determine which participants will receive the notification in the workspace, using metadata. For more information on targeting please refer to the Creating targets in Backstage article.
• Linked documents: Backstage users can link existing documents to the notification, or create a new document to link.
• Manage metadata fields: This button will display the Metadata Manager page.

Note: Leaving the Send at and Expire at fields empty will send the notification immediately, and the notification will not disappear from the participants' Notifications module in the workspace.

Creating notification templates

In the Display template tab, Backstage users can create, edit and save notification templates that can be used when sending out notifications to workspace participants.

To build the template, Backstage users can simply drag and drop the components to be used in the templates, from the left column, into central panel.

Notifications in the workspace

For the app users, the Notifications module will now contain a history of all notifications that are received.
This includes the notifications sent by Backstage users, as described above, as well as those sent automatically by the modules, in the form of meeting invites or updates, connection requests, feed, polling and form notifications.

When new notifications are received, a red badge will appear on the Notifications icon.

Technical notes

• Notifications that are scheduled to be received at a time based on the event time zone will be received on-time even if the participant's device is offline. Please note however that the app will need to have synchronised after the notification was created in Backstage, in order for this to work.
• If the Send at time is modified in a notification that has already been created and scheduled, the app will always need to synchronize in order for the update to take effect. Otherwise, the recipients will not receive a push notification but the notification will go straight to their notification module.
• Notifications that are to be sent immediately, or scheduled to be sent at a time based on the participant's time-zone, will only be delivered if the participant's device is online.
• Timezone-aware scheduled notifications need to be scheduled one day in advance. notifications will start to be delivered when the specified time is reached in the first timezone, i.e. at UTC+14, and from then on the notifications will be delivered every hour.
• Participants who do not have a timezone set will receive the notification in the GMT timezone.