Alert Rules are the heart of Staff Safe. A Staff Safe Alert Rule is what turns a staff member's badge press into a real alert that notifies responders. When an alert rule is configured and enabled, a press of a Smart Badge button immediately notifies the right people with the staff member's real-time location. If no rule covers a staff member and a location or a rule is turned off, a badge press will not reach responders. Because of this, Alert Rules deserve careful setup and review.
What an Alert Rule includes
Each Alert Rule brings together everything Staff Safe needs to trigger an alert when it mattters the most:
- Who it applies to — the staff the rule activates an alert for — chose this specific staff, a Staff Role, or a Staff Group.
- Where it applies — the campuses, buildings, and floors the rule covers.
- Which button signals for help — the badge button that activates an alert — options include the blue button, the red button, or any button.
- Who is notified, and how — the actions activated by the rule — how notifications are sent (email, text message, or a Webhook to a third-party system) and who is notified within each of these methods. Alerts always appear in the Staff Safe Alerts List as well.
- Reminders — optional follow-up notifications that repeat until an alert is acknowledged or resolved.
Each rule also has a severity — Critical, High, Medium, Low, or Info. Critical alerts add an in-app banner and an audible alert for extra visibility.
One alert type
Staff Safe uses a single alert type: Button Click — an alert activated by a Smart Badge button press.
Two separate settings determine how an alert is activated:
- The Alert Rule sets the button event — which button activates an alert: the blue button, the red button, or any button. The Alert Rule does not set the number of presses.
- The Smart Badge is configured during deployment with the number of button presses that activates an alert. By factory default this is three presses in quick succession, and it can be set from one to 10. On a badge with two buttons, the number of presses applies to both buttons. The Smart Badge 3 has two buttons; the Smart Badge 3 Mini has one.
Reminders
Reminders help make sure an alert isn't missed. If an alert stays Not Acknowledged or Not Resolved, Staff Safe can send a reminder — either once or repeating on a schedule you set — until someone responds.
You add reminders as part of an Alert Rule's notification actions.
How Alert Rules work with the rest of Staff Safe
- Staff Groups organize badge-wearers so a rule can apply to a whole group at once.
- Webhooks, created in Kio Cloud Company Settings, let a rule also send alerts to a third-party system. See Assign Webhooks to Alert Rules.
- User access — managing Alert Rules requires the Staff Safe Administrator role. See About user access to Staff Safe.
Keeping alerting reliable
- A rule only sends alerts while it is enabled. Turning a rule off stops alerting for all staff the rule covers.
- After you create or change a rule, test it — press a badge button and confirm the alert reaches responders.
To create your first rule, see Manage Alert Rules.