For more information about the availability of this feature, contact your Account Manager.

'Custom Alerts and Notifications' allows you to better communicate with your employees from ExakTime Connect to help ensure smooth business operations, such as, but not limited to:

• Alerting employees of bad weather at a job site via ExakTime Mobile or SMS.
• Remind them of upcoming events/tasks via SMS or Email.

Your alerts and notifications can be sent via email, text messages (SMS), and/or push notifications through ExakTime Mobile to improve the chances of your employees receiving your alerts/notifications. Alerts are intended to be sent to your employees at a moment's notice, while notifications are intended to be sent at a later date, such as reminders.

You can review the number of alerts/notifications sent and when they were sent with the 'Alerts and Notifications Dashboard'. For more information, refer to the following dedicated article.

Table of Contents

• How It Works
• Requirements to Receive an Alert/Notification
• Setting Up and Sending Custom Alerts/Notifications
• Character Limits

How It Works

Custom Alerts and Notifications are created from ExakTime Connect and sent to your employees based on enabled delivery methods. The differences between alerts and notifications are:

• Alerts - Notify your employees immediately of critical information (e.g. location closure due to extreme weather, divert employees to a secondary location, etc.)
• Notifications - Schedule a message for your employees (e.g. Reminder to come to the office for paperwork, etc.)

We offer the following delivery methods for alerts and notifications:

• Push Notification
• SMS Text
• Email

If all three methods are selected, we will prioritize "Push from ExakTime Mobile", then "SMS Text", then "Email", depending on what is available from the employee profile. The employee will also only receive one notification if multiple delivery methods are selected.

For example, if "Push Notification" and "SMS text" are enabled, the system will look to see if the employee has the mobile app installed and has allowed notifications. If the employee has met these conditions, he/she will receive a push notification. If the employee has not met these conditions the system will try to send them an SMS text message with the mobile phone number on record in ExakTime.

Below are examples of alerts/notifications sent to employees:

Things to Note

• Custom alerts and notifications sent to employees must be made manually and individually, as we do not currently offer a recurring option for notifications.
• Custom alerts and notifications do not currently send alerts/notifications based on events such as if an employee's time card needs corrections, an employee's answer for a mobile form, etc.

Requirements to Receive an Alert/Notification

For an employee to receive an alert or notification through any of the selected  delivery methods, they must have the following:

• Push Notification - An employee must have ExakTime Mobile version 2.81 or newer, ExakTime Mobile has permission to notifications, and the employee to receive the alert/notification is logged in to ExakTime Mobile. 
  • If an employee had accidentally denied "Notifications" from ExakTime Mobile, refer to the following article on how to grant ExakTime Mobile permission to Notifications.
  • If an employee is unsure of their ExakTime Mobile version, refer to the following article for an employee to double-check their version.
• SMS - An employee must have a mobile phone number in their employee profile to receive SMS alerts/notifications. For more information about an employee's profile, refer to the following dedicated article.
• Email - An employee must have an email in their employee profile to receive email alerts/notifications. For more information about an employee's profile, refer to the following dedicated article.

Setting Up and Sending Custom Alerts/Notifications

The process for setting up and using custom alerts and notifications has been outlined below:

1. Granting Permission to Custom Alerts and Notifications - Grant permission to non-Administrators to view and manage custom alerts and notifications. 
2. Understanding the Custom Alerts and Notifications Page - Learn how to navigate and use the Custom Alerts and Notifications page. 
3. Setting Up Delivery Methods - Enable the appropriate delivery method(s) for your custom alerts and notifications to employees. 
4. Creating an Alert/Notification - Learn how to create and send an alert/notification to employees.
   • Generating AI Messages for Alerts and Notifications - Use AI to help generate the text for your alert/notification. 
5. Edit Unsent Notifications - Learn how to edit notifications before they are sent to employees. 

Character Limits

Your alerts and notifications will have character limits depending on the delivery methods selected. The character count of your subject and message will be listed towards the bottom right.  

The character count will reflect the lowest character limit of the selected delivery methods. For example, if all three delivery methods are selected, the available character count will be 150. The character counts for the delivery methods are listed below:

• Push from ExakTime Mobile = 168 Character Limit
• SMS Text = 150 Character Limit
• Email = 5,000 Character Limit