Platform: Smarter Alert Rule recipients, phone calls, and Department locations — August 2026

Alert Rules are getting more flexible and easier to manage.

You can now select Kio Cloud Users and User groups as alert recipients instead of manually entering each person’s email address or phone number. Contact information comes directly from the user’s profile, helping keep Alert Rules up to date as people and teams change.

Temperature Monitoring and Staff Safe also introduce Phone calls, a new notification action that can place an automated call and allow the recipient to acknowledge the alert.

Alert Rules in Staff Safe and Temperature Monitoring now include Department locations - allowing a rule to monitor locations associated with a Department instead of a specific campus, building, or floor.

What's new

Select Users and User groups as alert recipients

Available in all Kio Apps.

Managing who gets notified is now easier.

For Emails and Text Messages notifications, you can select recipients in three ways and combine them within the same action:

• Recipients — Enter an email address or phone number directly. Manual entry continues to be supported and is useful for notifying someone who is not a Kio Cloud user, such as an on-call vendor or answering service.
• Users — Select Kio Cloud users by name. Their email address and phone number come from their user profile.
• User groups — Select a Group managed in the Users app. Every member of the Group is notified.

When you use Users or User groups, recipient information stays connected to Kio Cloud. If someone’s contact information changes, update their user profile instead of every Alert Rule that includes them. When Group membership changes, Alert Rules using that Group automatically use the updated membership — with no rule to edit.

Reach people with a phone call

Available in Temperature Monitoring and Staff Safe.

For alerts that need more immediate attention, you now have another way to reach the right people.

The new Phone calls action places an automated call that identifies itself as a Kontakt.io notification, announces the alert details, and reads the Message included in the Phone calls setting. The message repeats during the call so the recipient does not miss important information if they answer after the call begins. A Phone call can also include sending the notification as a Text Message.

Phone calls also include two settings designed specifically for voice notifications:

• Also send as Text Message — Sends a text message to the same recipients in addition to placing the call. This can be useful when a call goes to voicemail or the recipient needs alert details they can reference afterward. This setting is separate from the Text Messages action and uses the recipients configured for the Phone calls action.

• Acknowledgment — Determines whether the recipient can acknowledge the alert from the call.

  • Not enabled — The call is informational. The alert remains unacknowledged until someone acknowledges it in the Kio App or other notification method.
  • On answer — Answering the call acknowledges the alert.
  • On keypad button 1 press — The recipient is prompted to press 1 to acknowledge the alert. Pressing 1 is the only supported key.

For alerts that require confirmation someone is actively responding, On keypad button 1 press provides stronger acknowledgment than simply answering the call, which could occur through voicemail or an unintended interaction.

Acknowledgment from a phone call records who responded in the alert's Activity Timeline.

Set Alert Rule Location to a Department

Available in Temperature Monitoring and Staff Safe.

Alert location coverage can now align more closely with how your organization operates. This is useful when responsibility follows an operational team — such as a pharmacy, laboratory, or other department — rather than a specific physical location.

From a rule's Locations setting, you can now select a Department within a campus and building.

This allows an Alert Rule to monitor locations associated with a specific Department, even when those locations are within a larger campus or building.

Set phone number in user profiles

User profiles, managed in the Users app, now include an optional Phone Number. When a user is selected as an Alert Rule recipient, this number is used for Text Messages and Phone calls.

For users who sign in with single sign-on, the phone number comes from your identity provider and cannot be edited in the Users app.

Why it matters

These enhancements make Alert Rules easier to maintain and give teams more ways to connect alerts with the people responsible for responding.

• Keep recipients current with less maintenance. Select people and Groups instead of maintaining the same contact information across multiple Alert Rules.

• Reach people beyond email and text. Phone calls provide another way to get attention when someone may be away from their inbox or an alert requires a more immediate response.

• Know who is responding. Phone call acknowledgment can capture the person responding directly from the call.

• Align alerts with Department-level ownership. Department locations help to monitor locations based on organizational responsibility, not only a physical location.

Together, these updates make Alert Rules more adaptable as teams, responsibilities, and user contact information changes.

What you need to do

Kio Apps Administrators: To take advantage of the new recipient and phone notification options:

1. Add a phone number to the profile of users who need to receive text messages or phone calls.
2. Review existing Alert Rules and consider replacing manually entered email addresses and phone numbers with Users or User groups when the recipients are Kio Cloud users.
3. For Temperature Monitoring and Staff Safe, evaluate where Phone calls could help with alerts requiring additional visibility or acknowledgment.
4. Consider using Department locations when you need rules to monitor operational departments rather than a physical location.

For details about notification methods, recipient selection, and phone call settings, see:

Temperature Monitoring · Staff Safe · Asset Tracker · Device Health

To add or change a phone number on a user profile, see Add or change a user's phone number.

To manage Group membership, see About Groups.