Actions: Who is notified, and how
The Actions step sets how people and systems are notified after an alert is triggered. Any combination of actions can be selected.
Every triggered alert is always recorded in the app's Alerts list, whether or not any action is configured. Actions control who is notified — not whether the alert is listed in a Kio App.
Recipient alert notification methods
Emails: Sends an email that includes the action's Subject, then the alert details followed by the action's Message.
Text Messages: Sends a text message that includes the alert details followed by the action's Message. A short Message is better — a long text may be split by the recipient's carrier.
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Phone calls: Places an automated call that identifies itself as a Kontakt.io notification, then announces the alert details followed by the action's Message. The call repeats, so a missed first few seconds does not lose the alert. A Message of one or two sentences works best — anything longer is hard to follow when spoken. Phone calls has two settings the other methods do not:
- Also send as Text Message: Sends a text message as well as placing the call, to the same recipients. Use it when the call may go to voicemail and the recipient needs something they can read afterwards. This is separate from the Text Messages action: it reuses the Phone calls recipients, not the ones set there.
- Acknowledgment: Whether the alert can be acknowledged from the call itself. Not enabled makes the call informational, leaving the alert unacknowledged until someone acts on it in the app or from an email or text notification. On answer treats answering as acknowledgment. On keypad button 1 press ends the call by asking the recipient to press that key, which is the option to choose when answering alone is not proof that someone is acting on the alert — a call can be answered by voicemail or by a phone in a pocket.
Acknowledging records who is responding, so it is worth setting deliberately rather than leaving at the default. A phone call reaches only recipients who have a phone number; selected users without one are not called, and no error is shown.
Webhooks: Sends the alert to a third-party system as structured data for that system to process. Webhooks are created and configured in Company Settings, then selected here. Webhooks are commonly managed by an IT or an integration team, and then assigned to a rule.
Three ways to add recipients
Each notification action accepts recipients in three ways, and they can be combined in the same action:
- Recipients: Add individual email addresses or phone numbers directly, pressing Enter after each one. Use this for anyone without a Kio Cloud user profile, such as an on-call vendor or an answering service.
- Users: Select people by name from the Kio Cloud users in the account. Their contact details come from their user profile, so a change to a profile applies to every rule they are included in.
- User groups: Select a Group (managed from the Kio Cloud User app) and every member (user) in it is notified. As users are added or removed from a Group, the changes are automatically applied to the rule — no need to edit the rule.
Selecting Users or User groups is the more maintainable choice – each user profile's contact details live in one place, and rules do not need editing when user profile details change. Adding recipients directly remains the only way to notify someone who is not a Kio Cloud user.
Users and User groups are both maintained in the Users app, not here. Selecting them in an Alert Rule does not create or change them:
- Users: Each person's email address and phone number come from their user profile, in Users > User Management.
- User groups: Group membership is managed in Users > Groups. Adding or removing a member (user) changes every rule that group is part of.
Manage opens the Users app in a new tab. Only users assigned to the User Management Administrator role have access to view, create, and manage user profiles and groups, so if a required person is missing — or a group needs a new member — ask a User Management Administrator rather than working around it with a directly added address.
As recipients are selected, a summary shows who will actually be notified. Use it to confirm the rule reaches the intended people before saving.
Email and text notifications
Emails and text messages are not only what is provided in the subject and message. Each one combines three parts, in this order:
- Alert details the rule automatically generates. The alert name, what triggered it, and where — generated from the alert itself, so recipients are provided the alert details.
- The Subject and Message. Both are free-form text and are set on the action, not once for the rule, so each notification method can carry its own wording. An email requires both a Subject and a Message; a text message or phone call requires a Message. The message is commonly used for additional instructions the alert details cannot supply, such as which procedure to follow.
- A link to respond. Recipients can acknowledge or resolve the alert from the notification, without signing in to the app first. The system automatically logs each user action in the alert's Activity Timeline.
Because an alert notification automatically includes the alert details (name, trigger, and location) a Message works best as an instruction rather than a restatement of the alert. A Message belongs to the action it is set on — Emails, Text Messages and Phone calls each take their own — and the same text is sent for every alert that rule triggers — it has to hold true for everything the rule covers, which rules out naming a specific asset, location, or reading. For the alert details each rule type produces, see the notification examples specific for the Kio App.
Things to know
- A user selected twice is notified once. If someone is selected under Users and belongs to a selected User group, they receive one notification, not two.
- An empty group notifies no one. A group with no members is valid to select but reaches nobody, so the rule can look complete while notifying fewer people than intended.
- A user with no phone number cannot be reached by phone. An email address is required for every Kio Cloud user, so email always reaches its recipients. A phone number is optional. The recipient list indicates if anyone has no phone number, which is worth checking on any rule that depends on reaching someone urgently. To add a missing phone number, see Add a user.
Reminders and escalations
Two further controls on the Actions step keep an alert from being missed after it is triggered.
- Reminders: Sends the notifications again while the alert is still Not Acknowledged or Not Resolved, once or repeatedly, after a length of time you set. A reminder goes to the same recipients through the same actions — it does not widen who is notified.
- Escalations: Notifies a different group when the alert has gone unaddressed. An escalation is a separate Alert Rule of type Escalation, which you create first and then add here. Each Escalation rule can be used only once on a given Alert Rule.
If the Escalations section reports that no escalation rules are available, none have been created in this account yet. Create the Escalation rule first, then edit the Alert Rule to add it. See About escalation alerts.
Reminders suit a dispenser that is low but still usable — the refill can wait, provided it is not forgotten. Escalations suit a rule where nobody has acted at all and someone else needs to know.
What a Hand Hygiene alert notification contains
A Hand Hygiene alert is triggered by a dispenser, so the details generated for every notification identify that dispenser and where it is:
- The Alert Name from the rule that triggered it.
- The dispenser the alert is about, and its location — campus, building, floor, and room.
- The refill level that triggered the alert, and the threshold it crossed.
The rule's Severity is not part of email, text message, or phone call notifications. It is included only in the data sent to webhooks.
Because the location is already in the notification, a Message is better spent on what to do than on where to go — the refill supply to collect first, or who to tell if the dispenser turns out to be faulty rather than empty.