Notifications · User guide

Purpose and who uses it

Every signed-in user gets the same hotel feed, filtered by their own mutes and marked read per person.

Notifications tell the team what just happened: a new booking, a payment, a room turned dirty, a stock item running out, an export ready. Most entries are hotel-wide: everybody sees them, with a few personal ones (your test notification, for example). Read state is per person: marking an alert read for you does not clear it for a colleague.

There is no permission gate: the feed, the bell and the preferences are available to every role, because the feed only tells you where to look, the module you click through to still enforces its own access.

Screen anatomy

The full feed page, plus the bell panel that shows the last twelve entries from anywhere in the app.

Notifications page

1
Page head
“Notifications” with “3 unread” or “All caught up”.
8
Actions
Preferences (opens Settings → Notifications) and Mark all read (only while something is unread).
2
Category chips
All · Bookings · Payments · Operations · System. A chip filters the list; muted categories never appear.
4
Feed rows
Icon tinted by severity, title, optional body text, “5m ago”, and a purple dot while unread. Unread rows have a faint purple background.
5
Click a row
Marks it read and jumps to the module the alert is about.

The bell

The bell in the top bar carries a live unread count. Clicking it opens a panel, a popover on desktop, a bottom sheet on phones, titled Notifications with the twelve most recent entries, Mark all read, a close ×, and View all to open this page.
New alerts are prepended to the panel as they arrive. Esc or clicking outside closes it. When empty it reads “Nothing new. Events appear here as they happen.”

The feed loads the latest 100 entries. Empty states: “No payments notifications.” when a chip filter has nothing; otherwise “Nothing here yet. Bookings, check-ins and payments will appear as they happen.”: or, if you have not turned on device alerts in a browser that supports them, a prompt to do so with an Open notification settings button.

Categories and muting

Four categories; mute any of them for your own account and it disappears from every channel.

Categories (Settings → Notifications → Categories)
Field	Type	Notes
Bookings		New reservations, confirmations, check-ins and check-outs.
Payments		Payments received, invoices settled, refunds. Also “Stock short: …” alerts raised when a POS ticket closes with too little stock on hand.
Operations		Housekeeping, maintenance and room status; low-stock and out-of-stock alerts from Inventory.
System		Accounts, roles, exports (“Export ready”) and configuration changes.

1
Open Settings → Notifications
Or click Preferences on the feed page.
2
Click the chip beside a category
It toggles between On (green) and Muted (dimmed). The change saves immediately and rolls back with a toast if it fails.
3
Muted means gone from every channel
“Muted categories are hidden from your feed, badge, toasts and device alerts, for this account only.” The rows are still written for the hotel, so un-muting brings history back.

Toasts, OS banners and Web Push

Where an alert appears depends on whether the app is focused, hidden or closed.

Delivery path for one new alert

Event in the hotel → Toast (tab focused) (live socket)
Event in the hotel → OS banner (tab hidden) (live socket + Device alerts)
Event in the hotel → Web Push (app closed) (server push + Device alerts)

Tab focused: a toast slides in with the title, body and a link; the bell count goes up by one. No OS banner.
Tab open but hidden (another tab, minimised), with Device alerts on, the browser shows a system notification from the live event. Clicking it focuses the app and opens the linked module. This path needs no server configuration.
App closed or phone locked: the server sends a Web Push message to every device you enabled; the service worker shows the banner unless a focused app window already exists. This needs VAPID keys on the server, Settings tells you when they are missing: “OS banners work while a tab is open. Ask your admin to set VAPID keys for alerts when the app is closed.”
All three respect your category mutes.

Turning on Device alerts

One switch per browser or installed app: grants permission, registers the device and lets you send a test.

1
Open Settings → Notifications → Device alerts
The card reads “Off for this browser” or “On for this browser” with a hint that explains what will happen on this device.
2
Click the Off/On chip
The browser asks for notification permission. Allow it. When server push is configured the device is registered too. Toast: “Device alerts on, you will get banners when the app is in the background” (or “…on for this browser (server push is not configured yet)”).
3
Click Send test
A “Test notification, Device alerts are working on this browser.” entry is written to your personal System feed and pushed to your devices even if System is muted. The toast says “Hide this tab (or lock your phone) to see the OS banner as well.” when the tab is visible, or “Check your notification tray.” when it is not.
4
Turn off any time
Click the chip again: the device is unregistered and you see “Device alerts off for this browser”. The setting is per browser and per device, not per account.

Where a click takes you

Each alert links to the module it concerns; the target is fixed by what the alert is about.

Click-through targets
Field	Type	Notes
Booking		Bookings.
Invoice, payment		Payments.
Housekeeping task		Housekeeping.
Work order		Maintenance.
Stock item		Inventory.
Leave request		Staff.
POS ticket		POS.
Export, night audit		Reports.
Settings		Settings (the test notification lands here).
No record		Falls back to the category: Bookings → Bookings, Payments → Payments, Operations → Housekeeping, System → Settings; otherwise the feed itself.

Clicking marks the alert read first (optimistically, the page does not wait for the server), then navigates. OS banners and Web Push banners carry the same link and open it in the app.

Tips

Keep the badge honest and do not miss the big ones.

Errors you may see

The one server error, plus every reason Device alerts can refuse to turn on.

404Notification not found

Why

The alert you clicked was removed (for example a demo sandbox was reset) before it could be marked read.

Fix

Reload the feed.

This browser does not support notifications.

Why

No Notification API or service worker in this browser.

Fix

Use Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a Home Screen app.

On iPhone, add HMS to your Home Screen first, then open it from there.

Why

iOS Safari only supports push for installed web apps.

Fix

Share → Add to Home Screen, open the icon, enable again.

Notifications are blocked. Allow them in your browser settings, then try again.

Why

Permission was denied earlier for this site.

Fix

Change the site’s notification permission in the browser, then click the chip again.

Permission was not granted.

Why

You dismissed the browser prompt without allowing.

Fix

Click the chip again and choose Allow.

Service worker is not ready yet. Refresh and try again.

Why

The app’s worker had not finished installing.

Fix

Reload the page, then enable.

Could not read push subscription keys.

Why

The browser returned an incomplete push subscription.

Fix

Turn the switch off and on again; if it persists, try another browser.

Toast: The small in-app message that slides in while the tab is focused.
OS banner: A system notification shown by the browser or phone outside the app window.
Web Push: Server-sent notifications that arrive even when the app is closed; needs VAPID keys on the server.
Device alerts: The per-browser switch in Settings → Notifications that enables OS banners and Web Push.