Every email, text message, and phone call sent by a Staff Safe Alert Rule combines alert details generated by Staff Safe with the Subject and Message configured in the rule. In a duress situation the alert details are what a responder acts on, so knowing what they already contain makes it easier to configure a Message that adds to them.
The three parts of a notification
| Part | Source | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Alert details | Generated by Staff Safe | Identifies the alert, who signalled for help, and where they are |
| Subject and Message | Alert Rule settings | Response instructions the alert details cannot supply |
| Response link | Generated by Staff Safe | Lets the responder acknowledge or resolve the alert without signing in first |
The parts arrive in that order: alert details first, the action's Message next, then the link. Subject applies to email only.
The alert details Staff Safe supplies
Alert details are built from the alert itself, so they are always current and cannot be edited. They identify:
- The Alert Name from the rule, so responders can tell which rule sent it
- Who signalled for help — the staff member's name, and their ID where one is recorded
- Where they are, as a location path: campus, building, floor, and room
The location comes from the badge's real-time location at the moment the alert was activated, which is why wearing the badge correctly matters. Staff may wear either badge — see How to wear a Smart Badge 3 or How to wear a Smart Badge 3 Mini.
Example
The example below shows the alert details only. The action's Message follows, then the response link.
Main Campus Nurses Duress triggered by J. Alvarez (ID: 40182) in Main Campus > Tower B > Floor 3 > Room 312.
Staff Safe's Button Click rule type has no opening sentence of its own, so the notification begins with the Alert Name. That makes the Alert Name the first thing a responder reads, and worth choosing deliberately — a name like Main Campus Nurses Duress tells a responder where to go before they read anything else, while Rule 4 does not.
How each action delivers it
| Action | What the responder gets |
|---|---|
| Emails | The action's Subject as the email subject. The body carries the alert details, the action's Message, and the response link. When Subject is empty, the email is sent without one. |
| Text Messages | One message containing the alert details, the action's Message, and the response link. A short Message is better — long text is split by the recipient's carrier, which can separate the link from the alert. |
| Phone calls | An automated call that identifies itself as a Kontakt.io notification, then announces the alert details and the action's Message. The call repeats, so a missed first few seconds does not lose the alert. Whether the recipient can acknowledge the alert from the call, and how, depends on the action's Acknowledgment setting. |
| Webhooks | The alert as structured data for the receiving system to process. The payload is defined by the webhook itself in Company Settings, not by the Alert Rule — it carries whichever built-in variables the webhook's template uses. See Webhook built-in variables reference. The action sets only which webhook to call, so a Subject or Message written on another action never reaches it. |
What makes a useful Message
A Message belongs to the action it is set on, not to the rule as a whole — Emails, Text Messages, and Phone calls each take their own. Whichever action carries it, the same text is sent for every alert that rule triggers. The alert details change with each alert; the Message does not. It therefore has to hold true for every staff member and location the rule covers.
That rules out anything specific. A Message naming one staff member or location will be wrong for most of the alerts it is sent with, and it duplicates what the alert details already provide.
What works instead is a standing instruction — the procedure to follow, and who to contact:
- Effective: "Respond per the duress protocol and notify Security dispatch on channel 2 while en route."
- Less effective: "Nurse on Floor 3 needs help — go to Room 312" — the alert details already carry those specifics, and they are wrong for everything else the rule covers.
A narrowly defined rule can support a more specific Message, because less is in play. The more a rule covers, the more general the Message has to be.
Alert Rules are commonly created and maintained by several administrators, and read by responders who did not configure them. A Message therefore needs to make sense on its own:
- Name teams, departments, and extensions rather than individuals, so the Message survives staff changes.
- Avoid shorthand that only the person who wrote the rule would recognize.
- Point to a procedure the recipient can follow without knowing which rule sent the alert or who set it up.
The same reasoning applies to the Alert Name, which recipients see first and other administrators rely on when reviewing rules. A consistent naming convention — location, alert type, and who it covers — makes both the notification and the Alert Rules list easier to work with.
Important: A notification tells a responder an alert exists; it does not assign it. Acknowledging from the notification records who is responding, which is what stops several responders converging on the same alert while another goes unanswered.