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Notifications — Who Gets Told What

Your agents work while nobody's watching, so the only thing standing between a customer asking for a human at 7pm and nobody noticing until morning is who you've told UpSmith to email. The Notifications page is where you set that up — per person, per agent, per kind of event.

Two things to know first

  • Most of this page saves the moment you flip a switch. There's no Save button on the People, By agent or By event tabs, and no confirmation when it works. Only the escalation protocols tab makes you click Save.

  • What you can see depends on your role. Admins see everyone on the account and can edit anyone. If you're not an admin, this page shows you only yourself — that's not a bug, and it's not something you can change from here.

The five tabs

  • People — pick a person, edit everything they hear about. This is the one you'll use most.

  • By agent — pick an agent, see who's getting each of its events. Good for "who's covering Mollie?"

  • By event — pick one kind of event, see who's subscribed across every agent. Good for "is anyone getting escalations?"

  • Escalation protocols — the ladder that pulls more people in when nobody claims an escalation.

  • History — every notification UpSmith actually sent, and whether it landed.

The first three are three views of the same thing. Change something on one and it's changed on the others.

Subscribing someone

  1. On People, pick the person from the list on the left.

  2. Set their Delivery channels — Email, SMS, or both.

  3. Then choose what reaches them, working down the page.

There are four widths of subscription, and the wider one always wins:

  • Receive every notification — "Every event from every agent. Overrides everything below." The blunt instrument. Fine for an owner, punishing for anyone else.

  • Agent feeds — All {Agent} events. Everything one agent generates: escalations, bookings, renewals, the lot.

  • Event feeds — one kind of event from every agent. This is usually the right shape: one person on escalations, another on bookings.

  • Per-agent overrides — expand an event row to narrow it to particular agents.

A switch shows a middle state when someone is subscribed to some but not all of what it covers. Turning off one cell underneath a broad subscription quietly rewrites it into the narrower pieces that survive — the result is right, but the switches above it will change as you go.

The event categories

  • Human follow-up — "Conversations that need a teammate to step in." These carry a red Critical pill. If you subscribe nobody to anything else, subscribe someone to these.

  • Appointments — "Booked, updated, canceled — and pending confirmations."

  • Memberships — "Lifecycle events on memberships."

  • Estimates — "Estimate requests and confirmed interest."

  • Reports & digests — "Scheduled performance summaries." Daily, weekend, weekly and monthly reports, plus the capacity digest.

  • Campaign health — "Daily heads-up when a campaign needs setup changes to keep reaching customers."

One of these is worth calling out: Customer Reply While AI Paused sits under Human follow-up, is switched on by the recommended set, and fires the moment a customer replies to a conversation whose AI is paused — "Immediate alert when a customer replies to a conversation whose AI is paused." It's never batched into a digest, however you've set Send individually. If a CSR on your team takes conversations over by hand, this is the one that stops a reply sitting unread while they're looking somewhere else.

Email, text, or a digest

  • Email works for anyone on the list. They need an email address on file, which everyone does.

  • Text only works for people who are users on your account. If someone was added as a plain email recipient rather than invited as a user, SMS stays greyed out — "SMS can only be enabled for user recipients. Add this person as an organization user first."

  • A phone number has to be on file first. Add it with Edit phone right on this page. Until then you'll see "Add a valid phone to enable SMS."

  • Send individually — "Skip the digest and send every notification immediately." Off means the quieter events get batched. On means every one arrives the moment it happens. Turn it on for the person on call; leave it off for everyone else.

The two buttons that move fast

At the top of a person's settings:

  • Reset to recommended — wipes what they had and subscribes them to the recommended set instead.

  • Clear all — unsubscribes them from everything.

Neither asks you to confirm, and there's no undo. They apply the second you click. If you're tidying up someone's settings, note down what they had first.

The escalation ladder

An escalation nobody claims should reach more people over time. That's what Escalation protocols is for, and it's set per agent.

  1. Pick the agent from the list on the left.

  2. Tier 1 · immediate — "Sends needs-review notifications immediately". Tick who hears about it the moment it's raised.

  3. Click Add delay for each later step, set how long, and tick who that step reaches.

  4. Click Save. This tab is the only one that doesn't save on its own.

Things to know about the ladder:

  • Five delayed steps, maximum. Past that you'll see "At most 5 delayed steps are allowed."

  • Delays go in 15-minute jumps. The send job ticks every fifteen minutes, so a finer delay would just fire late. Anything else gives you "Delays must be in 15-minute increments."

  • Every step is skipped once someone acts. "Skipped after any claim, resolution, or archive" — assigning the escalation is enough to stop the ladder. So is resolving it.

  • A ticked-but-greyed row marked Inherited means that person already gets this through a broader subscription. Change it on the People tab, not here.

  • Only admins can save this tab. Everyone can see it, and everyone can press Save — but a non-admin gets a red Forbidden banner and nothing is written.

Checking whether something was sent

The History tab is the audit log of every notification UpSmith sent — date, recipient, Email or SMS, event type, and Delivered or Failed. Filter by recipient or event type, or search by name. When someone says "I never got it," this is where the argument ends.

Troubleshooting

Someone isn't getting notifications they're subscribed to. Check History first. If the send is there and says Delivered, it's a mailbox or filter problem on their end. If it isn't there at all, check their subscription really saved — the page has no error message when a change doesn't stick.

A teammate has vanished from the list. Their access to your account was removed. People who aren't members any more don't appear here, and they don't receive anything either — that's the intended behaviour, not a bug. Re-invite them from Settings → Members and they'll come back.

The SMS switch won't turn on. Either they aren't a user on your account, or there's no valid phone number on file. Add the number with Edit phone; if that isn't the problem, invite them as a user rather than adding them as an email recipient.

You unticked someone and now they're getting more, not less. Turning off one cell under a broad subscription rewrites it into narrower rows. If it landed somewhere you didn't intend, Clear all on that person and rebuild them from Reset to recommended.

You pressed Save on escalation protocols and got a red banner. If it says Forbidden, you're not an admin on this account. Ask an admin to make the change, or to make you one.

Nobody was told about an escalation for hours. Open the agent's protocol and check there's someone on Tier 1 · immediate. Delayed steps only help if the first rung has somebody on it.

Common questions

Can I subscribe a shared inbox instead of a person? Yes — an email-only recipient works for everything except SMS, and adding one is an admin action.

What's in the recommended set? Conversations that need a human, the paused-AI customer reply, the weekly capacity digest, and the weekly report. It's a sensible starting point for an owner or an office manager, not a full coverage plan.

If someone leaves, do I need to clean up their notifications? No. Removing their account access is enough — they stop receiving and stop appearing here. Their recurring reports need two separate checks, though. Any report they own keeps sending on schedule and nobody at your company can change it, so email support@upsmith.com to have it reassigned. And if they were a Viewer or Editor on someone else's report, that report's owner removes them from its Share dialog. See Recurring Reports and Sharing a Recurring Report.

Why are there two ways to get escalations — a subscription and a protocol? The subscription is who hears about it immediately. The protocol is who hears about it if nobody does anything. You want both.

Can I set a quiet-hours window so nothing arrives overnight? Not from this page. Escalations are meant to reach someone at 4:55pm rather than wait for morning, so there's deliberately no mute. If overnight sends are a problem for your team, email support@upsmith.com.

Where to go next