Create an Alert Rule

Create an Alert Rule to define which staff are covered, where, which Smart Badge button activates an alert, and who is notified when it does. Until an active Alert Rule covers a staff member at their location, a badge press does not reach responders.

Based on your deployment, you may have one or many Alert Rules — for example, one per campus so each site's own responders are notified.

Before you begin

Make sure the following setup is complete:

• You're assigned to the Staff Safe Administrator role. Roles are managed by those assigned to the User Management Administrator role.
• Staff exist in Staff Safe and are assigned to a Staff Role. If the rule will use a Staff Group, the Group exists and has members. See Manage staff.
• Smart Badges are assigned to the staff the rule will cover. A badge that is not assigned has no staff member to attribute an alert to. See Assign badge to staff from Staff Safe.
• Your Smart Location hierarchy is complete for the campuses, buildings, and floors the rule will cover.
• You know who should be notified. Kio Cloud users and User groups can be selected by name; anyone else — an answering service or external security provider, for example — is added as an email address or phone number.
• To notify a third-party system, the webhook is already set up in Kio Cloud Company Settings.

Create the rule

1. From your Kontakt.io Launchpad, select Staff Safe.

2. From the Settings menu, select Alert Rules.

3. Select Create Alert > Button Click.

4. You are guided through six steps: General, Applies To, Locations, Conditions, Actions, and Summary.

5. On Step 1 General, enter an Alert Name and set the Severity.

   • Alert Name uniquely identifies the rule and appears in notifications and the Alert Rules list. Define a naming convention and keep to it — location, severity, and who it covers reads well, for example Main Campus Critical Nurses Only.
   • Alert Description is optional, for information sharing.
   • Alert Severity options are Critical, High, Medium, Low, and Info. A Critical alert also raises an in-app banner and plays an audible notification for signed-in users.

   Keep Activate Alert Rule selected so the rule begins monitoring after you save it. Clear it to save the rule without activating — useful during a setup phase. The rule must be activated before testing or go-live.

6. On Step 2 Applies To, select the staff the rule monitors.

   Options are specific Staff, a Staff Role, or a Staff Group. When a staff member covered here activates an alert from their badge, the rule immediately triggers a new alert and sends the notifications set in the rule's Actions.

   Anyone not covered here is not covered by this rule. This is worth re-checking after a staffing change — a new hire with a badge but no place in the rule's Staff Group has a working badge whose alerts reach no one.

7. On Step 3 Locations, choose how the rule covers locations, then make the selection:

   • Location: select the campuses, buildings, or floors the rule covers. Selecting a campus or building covers everything beneath it.
   • Department: select the departments the rule covers. Departments are grouped by campus and building; selecting a campus or building selects all the departments under it. A department that spans more than one building is covered everywhere it exists.

   The two are alternatives, not additions: a rule applies by location or by department, and switching between them clears the current selection. Location is selected by default.

   Departments come from Smart Location. If a department is missing from the list, it has not been created there yet.

8. On Step 4 Conditions, select the Smart Badge button event that activates an alert: Blue Button, Red Button, or Any Button.

   Where staff may use either button, select Any Button. The rule sets which button activates an alert; it does not set how many presses are required — that is configured on the badge, three times by factory default.

9. On Step 5 Actions, set how and who is notified when an alert is activated.

   • Select the notification methods to use — Emails, Text Messages, Phone calls, or Webhooks. At least one action is required, and any combination can be selected.
   • For each method, add recipients as individual email addresses or phone numbers, or select Users and User groups.
   • Optionally, add a Subject and Message. The alert details are generated automatically, so use the Message for instructions rather than repeating the alert.
   • Optionally, add reminders to re-notify the same recipients while the alert remains unacknowledged or unresolved.

   The User groups selected here decide who is notified. They are not Staff Groups, which decide which staff the rule monitors in Step 2. A rule commonly uses both, and the same people are rarely in each.

   Every activated alert appears in the Staff Safe Alerts list regardless of the notification methods selected.

   For what each method sends, how recipients respond, and the settings unique to phone calls, see About Alert Rules actions and notification recipients.

10. On Step 6 Summary, verify every setting. To change one, select its edit icon.

11. Select Save.

Result

The rule appears in Settings > Alert Rules.

If Activate Alert Rule was selected, the rule is active and monitoring immediately. When a covered staff member presses the configured button at a covered location, Staff Safe activates an alert, sends the configured notifications, and adds the alert to the Alerts list.

To receive notifications and be able to acknowledge or resolve an alert, a recipient must also be a Kio Cloud user assigned to a Staff Safe role with access to alerts. A recipient added only as an email address can read the notification but cannot act on the alert.

To edit, copy, activate, deactivate, or delete a rule later, see Manage Alert Rules.