Notifications
What your phone and your email tell you, and when they stay quiet.
Turn on notifications, this phone
- Open Settings in the app and choose Notifications.
- On the phone you are holding, choose Turn on notifications and allow them when your phone asks. That phone then gets the notifications you choose under What to send.
- A phone with notifications on adds itself to the list of phones when its app opens. Choose Turn off on this phone to stop them on that phone (in a browser or the Home Screen app, Turn off on this device), or Remove beside another phone in the list.
- On an iPhone, notifications come to the app added to your Home Screen (in Safari, Share, then Add to Home Screen), not to a Safari tab.
If they don’t arrive, see Notifications not arriving.
- Type your address and choose Send code. We send a 6-digit code to confirm the address is yours.
- Enter the code from the email and choose Confirm. The code works for 30 minutes. If it has expired or you typed it wrongly too often, send a new one.
- Until you confirm a new address, notifications keep going to the old one. You can remove an address later, and emails stop at once.
If the screen says email notifications aren’t switched on yet, email isn’t available for your account yet.
What to send
In Notifications, choose What to send (“Choose which alerts you get”) to open five switches that choose which calls you hear about. Changes apply right away, to your email and to your phones.
- Urgent calls: when a caller describes one of your emergencies, or the AI summary marks the call urgent.
- Calls that need you: when a call needs a reply or a decision from you, and notices about your account.
- Bookings: when your receptionist books, moves or cancels an appointment.
- Messages: when a caller leaves a message, gives their details or texts you.
- Other calls: a question answered, a hang-up, or a caller who couldn’t get through.
You get one notification per call, naming everything that applies. A test call notifies you like any other call, so it’s a quick way to check your alerts.
Two more follow Calls that need you. When a caller asks for you and the transfer isn’t answered, everyone who gets call updates hears right away (Asked for you). A call that needs you and that nobody on your team opens within two business hours gets one reminder, “Still needs you”.
Alerts in the iPhone app are Planned. Until then, an iPhone gets them from the web app on its Home Screen, or by email.
Each person on the team chooses their own switches. Notices about the account go to the owner, and a connection that stops working also to admins. When a problem on our side affects calls and we send a push and an email, everyone on the team gets them, titled “Service update”.
Only urgent calls outside business hours
Turn on Only urgent calls outside business hours to keep your phones quiet when your business is closed.
- Outside your business hours, and on days you’re closed, your phones stay quiet except for urgent calls. Days you set as closures, such as a holiday or a vacation, count as closed.
- Other calls aren’t lost. They wait in the app, unread.
- Email is unchanged: it follows What to send as before.
- The switch is yours alone. It quiets all of your phones and nobody else’s.
Urgent calls are never held back by this switch. Your phone’s own Do Not Disturb or Focus can still silence them: to let them through, see Urgent calls at night. The switch appears in Notifications when phone alerts are available for your account.
Urgent calls at night
On Android, open Notifications in the app and choose Let urgent calls through Do Not Disturb, then turn on VoiceDog in the list that opens. If Android doesn’t allow it, open Android’s Settings, then Modes, choose your mode, then Apps, and add VoiceDog.
On an iPhone, open Settings, Focus, Sleep, Apps, and add VoiceDog under Allow Notifications From. Repeat for Do Not Disturb and any night Focus.
Then send a test urgent alert from Notifications.
Sound and vibration
On an Android phone with notifications turned on, Sound and vibration appears under Notifications. Choose it to open Android’s own list of this app’s kinds of notification, and choose how each kind sounds and vibrates.
Daily recap
Turn on Daily recap to get one notification at 6 PM, your business’s time, on days with calls: the day’s calls, bookings and messages, what still needs you, callers who couldn’t get through, unread texts, and a problem on our side if one affected calls. Calls that waited for quiet hours are counted in it too.
Weekly report
The Weekly report switch sends an email on Monday morning about the week before. It lists the calls answered (and how many of those were while you were closed), the calls not answered, the visits booked and their value at your prices, the visits done (from your answers, Housecall Pro or Jobber), the visits not confirmed yet, and the questions it couldn’t answer.
A week with no answered call and no booking sends no report. Your first report comes on the Monday after the week of your first answered call; until then, the Weekly report row on Home and in Analytics says the day.
- Only the owner and admins see the switch, and only when the business’s plan includes the report.
- It goes to your confirmed email address (see Email above). With no confirmed email and phone alerts on, it comes to your phone as a notification instead.