Notifications overview
Notifications are used to communicate important information to customers and staff throughout the customer journey. These include confirmations, reminders, follow-up messages, and alerts—for example, when an appointment customer arrives or when a waiting time threshold is reached.
You can also send instant SMS notifications manually to inform customers in the queue about urgent changes, such as service disruptions or early branch closures.
This topic provides an overview of the available notification channels, notification types, and the triggers used to send them.
Notification types
Notifications can be used at different stages of the customer journey to communicate relevant information. The following sections describe the types of notifications available and when they are typically sent.
Appointment notifications
The following types of notifications are available for appointments:
Booking confirmation: Sent when a customer has booked an appointment.
Booking reminder: Sent when an appointment is coming up.
Check-in reminder: Sent when it's time to check in for an appointment.
Cancellation confirmation: Sent when an appointment is canceled.
Visit notifications
Visit notifications are event-based notifications that are sent from the point when the customer arrives at the branch until the visit is ended.
Visit notifications can be sent when the following events occur:
Visit Create: Sent when a walk-in visit is created or when an appointment is checked in. This can be used to inform the customer of their queue number if you don't have any physical tickets, or send a link to Mobile Ticket.
Visit Position: Sent when a visit reaches a certain position in the queue. This can be used to inform customers that it is soon their turn.
Note
You can define for which positions (max. 2) Visit Position notifications should be sent in the Notifications unit type.
Visit Transfer: Sent when a visit is transferred. This can be used to let customers know that their visit has been transferred to another queue or pool.
Visit Call: Sent when a visit is called. This can be used to inform customers that it is their turn.
Note
For Visit Call notifications to be sent, the Visit Call setting must be enabled in the Notifications unit type.
Visit End: Sent when a visit is ended. This can be used to thank them for the visit and send a link to give feedback.
Visit update (triggered manually): This is used if a visit has been created without phone number/ email / customer name. In Serve and Check in, it is possible to add a phone number to the visit later to send a link to Mobile Ticket. The Activate SMS ticket option is activated in the Visit options.
Note
This requires that the Send SMS setting is enabled in the unit types for the Serve view and/or the Check in view.
Instant notifications to queueing customers (via SMS)
Instant SMS notifications allow staff to quickly communicate important information to customers currently waiting in the queue.
These notifications are manually triggered and can be used in urgent or time-sensitive situations—for example, to inform queuing customers that a branch is closing early, that a specific service is unavailable, or that they may experience extended wait times.
Instant SMS notifications are designed to help customers make informed decisions while they are still waiting, reducing confusion and improving the customer experience.
Note
While similar in purpose to Visit notifications, Instant SMS notifications are not sent automatically but offer staff a flexible, immediate way to reach customers during their visit.
Staff alerts
You can send the following notifications to staff:
SLA alerts: Sent when the defined service level agreement (SLA) has been reached.
Arrival alerts: Sent when a customer arrives to a specified queue or service.
Custom alerts: Sent when a custom event occurs, for example when a customer has given bad feedback.
Staff alert recipients
When you edit the settings for a staff alert, you can configure who should receive the notification. First, you select the receiver type. You have the following options:
User: Sends the alert to the selected user.
Role: Sends the alert to the selected role.
Direct: Sends the alert to the email addresses or phone numbers you enter. If you enter more than one, separate them by comma.
Primary Resource: Send the alert to the primary resource of the appointment. Only applicable for arrival alerts.
If the staff alert is based on Queue and you select User or Role as recipient type, you can also select if the alert should only be sent to users that
have the selected role (if receiver type is Role), and
are logged in to a counter, and
are serving the selected queue.
SLA alert level and reset level
For SLA alerts, you can set the alert level that should trigger the alert. For waiting customers, you enter the number of customers. For waiting time, you enter the waiting time in minutes. You can also set a reset level, which is the level when the alert is reset and can be triggered again.
Example: Let's say you are setting up an SLA alert for number of waiting customers and you set the alert level to 10 and reset level to 5. This means an alert will be sent when there are 10 customers waiting. The alert will not be sent again until the number has decreased to 5 and then increased to 10 again.
Notification methods
The following channels can be used to send notifications:
Email: Suitable for appointment confirmations, reminders, and other cases where you want to include longer messages with HTML formatting.
SMS: Suitable for real-time notifications, such as when a visit reaches a certain position in the queue, or when sending a link to Mobile Ticket after a visit is created. SMS is also used for instant notifications that are sent manually to customers waiting in the queue.
Note
There are also settings to enable in-app notifications to notify staff about certain events. See Desktop notification in Serve view and Managing notifications in Monitor queues view
Note
When you select notification channel for a notification type, there is an option to select Email then SMS. In this case, the system first tries to send an email, but if a valid email address is missing, an SMS is sent.
Notification triggers
Notifications are usually sent automatically based on events in the system. Some notification types can also be sent manually.
Manual notifications:
Visit Update can be triggered manually from the Check in view and the Serve view.
Instant SMS notifications can be sent manually to queuing customers via the menu option Notify customer.
Appointment confirmations can be manually resent if needed.