> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://badixth-dc85e378.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Notification Preferences: Channels, Quiet Hours, and Digests
> Configure how Activity & Alerts reaches you: which channels per severity, quiet hours, digest schedules, and per-category overrides. Critical and High always deliver immediately.
[Activity & Alerts](/guides/activity-and-alerts) is one unified feed. Notification Preferences is where each user decides **how** that feed reaches them: which channels, which severities, which categories, and when the platform is allowed to interrupt them.
Preferences change delivery, not what gets recorded. Every event still lands in the feed and the [Activity Log](/guides/activity-log). Muting a category only stops the ping, not the record.
## The delivery model
Every event has three attributes that decide whether you get notified:
1. **Severity** - Info, Low, Medium, High, Critical (see the [unified severity ladder](/guides/activity-and-alerts#unified-severity-ladder))
2. **Category** - Field Alerts, Weather, Scout, Tasks, VRA, Verification, Team
3. **Field / group scope** - which fields the event belongs to
Your preferences map each combination to a set of channels. The defaults are safe for most users; override anything that does not fit your workflow.
**Critical and High severities always deliver immediately** on at least one channel, regardless of your other settings. Quiet hours, digests, and category mutes cannot suppress them. This is a platform-level guarantee for field safety and yield protection.
## Channels
| Channel | Best for | Latency | Configurable per-user |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | --------- | -------------------------- |
| **In-app** | Everything; the primary feed | Real-time | Always on |
| **Email** | Digests, summaries, verification receipts | Minutes | Yes |
| **SMS** | Critical field alerts when the app is closed | Seconds | Yes, phone number required |
| **Push (mobile)** | Field-time alerts, task assignments | Seconds | Yes, per device |
| **Slack / Teams** | Team-wide channels, ops rooms | Seconds | Yes, per workspace |
| **Webhook** | Downstream automation, farm management systems | Seconds | Yes, per endpoint |
In-app is always on and cannot be disabled. It is your permanent record. All other channels are opt-in.
## Default delivery matrix
These are the platform defaults. Every row is editable per user.
| Severity | In-app | Push | SMS | Slack / Teams | Email |
| ------------ | :----: | :--: | :-: | :--------------: | :-----------: |
| **Critical** | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (channel + DM) | ✓ |
| **High** | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (channel) | ✓ |
| **Medium** | ✓ | ✓ | | ✓ (channel) | Daily digest |
| **Low** | ✓ | | | | Daily digest |
| **Info** | ✓ | | | | Weekly digest |
## Setting up your preferences
Click your avatar → **Notification Preferences**. Preferences are per-user, not per-estate.
Confirm your email, phone number for SMS, and any connected Slack, Teams, or push devices. Unverified channels cannot receive Critical or High.
For each severity row, tick the channels you want. Critical and High require at least one channel; the UI enforces this.
Some categories deserve tighter or looser routing than the severity default. Example: send **every** VRA lifecycle event to Slack for the ops room, but keep Team events in-app only.
Choose a start and end time in your local zone. During quiet hours, Medium and below hold until the window closes. Critical and High always deliver.
Daily digest time and weekly digest day. Digests only include items below your immediate-delivery threshold.
## Category overrides
Overrides let you route a single category differently from the severity default. Common patterns:
Category **VRA** → route all severities to `#ops-room` Slack channel. Individuals still get their normal severity routing on other channels.
Category **Team** and **Scout completions** → digest only on Saturday and Sunday. Field Alerts and Weather stay on the normal schedule so real risks still ping.
All categories → digest only, except Critical which routes to SMS. Result: one daily email plus SMS for anything urgent.
Rule card **rice\_blast** → SMS on every severity for this user for the next 14 days. Everyone else keeps normal routing. Auto-expires.
## Quiet hours
Quiet hours are a **local-time** window during which Medium, Low, and Info deliveries hold and release together when the window ends. Critical and High are exempt.
* **Default**: 22:00 to 06:00 local
* **Weekend override**: extend by up to 3 hours on Saturday and Sunday
* **Travel-aware**: quiet hours follow the device time zone, not your home zone. If you land in a different region, the window shifts automatically.
If your role includes an on-call rotation, the platform disables quiet hours during your on-call window automatically. This is set by the estate admin, not by the individual user.
## Digest schedule
Digests are AI-summarized rollups of everything below your immediate-delivery threshold.
| Digest | Default time | Contents |
| ---------- | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Daily** | 07:00 local | Last 24 hours of Low and Medium items, grouped by field, with the top actions surfaced |
| **Weekly** | Friday 16:00 local | Last 7 days of Info items, scout completion rate, VRA applications, verification acceptance rate |
Digests link back to the feed for one-click drilldown. They never contain Critical or High items; those already delivered immediately.
## Team and estate-level defaults
Estate admins can set **recommended defaults** for a team. New members inherit them on first login. Individuals can still override any row.
Estate → **Notification Defaults**.
Adjust the severity × channel matrix that new members will start with.
For compliance or safety, admins can **lock** specific rows so individuals cannot disable them. Example: lock Critical → SMS on for every user. Locked rows show a padlock icon in the user's settings.
## What preferences do NOT control
* **Whether an event happens** - preferences never affect the risk engine, alert engine, or [Activity Log](/guides/activity-log).
* **What Verification captures** - every operation still cross-checks. See [Verification Model](/concepts/verification-model).
* **The unified severity ladder** - severity is computed from the [rule card](/concepts/risk-model), not from your preferences.
* **Compliance floors** - locked rows and the Critical / High delivery guarantee override any user setting.
## Troubleshooting
Check that your phone number is verified. Carriers occasionally reject long-form SMS; the platform falls back to a shortened link. If the failure persists, the platform automatically escalates delivery to Push and Email and shows a red badge in your settings.
The workspace token may have expired. Estate admin reconnects the workspace under Integrations. During disconnect, all Slack-only routes fall back to Email so you still get the message.
Move Info to weekly digest only, and consider muting the Team category if you do not manage other users. Info to weekly is the platform's recommended baseline; the default is Info-in-app for transparency, not for volume.
Settings → **Delivery Log** shows every send, including channel, timestamp, and delivery receipt (where the channel supports one). Useful for confirming that a Critical alert reached you before an incident.
## Guardrails
This module follows the shared [guardrails template](/snippets/guardrails-template). The agent and every non-agent write path must respect these rules.
| Category | Rule |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Input validation** | Every preference row carries `severity`, `channel`, `enabled`, and (when scoped) `field_ids[]` or `estate_id`. Quiet hours require a valid IANA time zone; digest times require valid local times. Rule-card-scoped overrides require an existing `rulecard_id` and an explicit `expires_at`. Unverified channels cannot be set to receive Critical or High. |
| **Preconditions** | Channel must be verified before it can receive Critical or High. Estate-level defaults may only be set by an estate admin. Locked rows may only be modified by the admin who owns the lock or by an org admin. On-call windows may only be set by an estate admin. |
| **Refusals** | Disabling `in_app` on any severity. Disabling all channels for Critical or High (safety floor: they always deliver on at least one channel). Modifying an admin-locked row from a non-admin identity. Setting a rule-card override without `expires_at`. Muting a severity ≥ high signal beyond the bounded window declared by the safety floor. |
| **Confirmations** | Disabling a previously-verified channel for Critical or High (safety floor: refused unless another verified channel remains). Overriding estate defaults for a locked row (requires admin identity + reason). Setting quiet hours that span more than 12 hours. Enabling webhook delivery for Critical or High without an on-call fallback configured. Reversible changes (adding a channel, adjusting a non-locked row, changing digest time, editing a scoped override) commit optimistically with a 5-second undo. |
| **Soft warnings** | Preference change would silence more than 50% of the user's current alert volume. Rule-card override expires inside the next 7 days. Quiet hours cover the estate's on-call window. Preference conflicts with an estate default (informational; user can proceed). |
| **Rate and scope limits** | Bulk import of preference rows capped at N per org action (org-configurable) because of notification blast radius. No hard cap on individual edits; workflow volume is a soft warning, not a refusal. Webhook endpoint additions are rate-limited to prevent enumeration. |
| **Audit** | Every preference write conforms to the [Audit Envelope](/snippets/audit-envelope). Module-specific fields: `severity`, `channel`, `previous_enabled`, `new_enabled`, `scope` (org \| estate \| user \| field \| rule\_card), `locked` (boolean), `expires_at` (for scoped overrides), and `override_reason` (when overriding a locked row). Delivery routing changes are audited even when the underlying preference did not change (e.g., estate default propagation). |
| **Escalation** | Attempted disable of a safety-floor channel escalates to the estate admin. Repeated attempts to modify a locked row (three within 7 days by the same identity) escalate to the org admin. On-call window changes escalate to the estate admin for acknowledgement. Delivery failure on Critical or High escalates per [Field Alerts](/guides/alerts-notifications). |
## Related
* [Activity & Alerts](/guides/activity-and-alerts) - the unified feed these preferences route.
* [Field Alerts](/guides/alerts-notifications) - the four data-driven alert types.
* [Activity Log](/guides/activity-log) - the timeline lens; unaffected by delivery preferences.
* [Risk Model](/concepts/risk-model) - defines severity, which drives routing.