Notifications¶
How your customers and staff hear from your business: order updates, payment receipts, OTPs, overdue reminders, delivery alerts, across Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push. This guide covers what you can configure yourself as a tenant admin: which channels are active, your own WhatsApp number, and which notification types go out on which channel.
If you're building against the notifications API directly, you want the Notifications REST API reference in the Technical Guide instead. This page is for the Settings screens.
In this section¶
- Channels & Providers — connecting your own Email, SMS, and WhatsApp sender so messages go out under your own brand, WhatsApp's specific requirements, and choosing which channel(s) each notification type uses.
- Message Templates — what a customer actually receives for each kind of notification, with real examples, and where a payment or invoice link gets attached automatically.
- WhatsApp Inbox — the shared inbox for two-way WhatsApp conversations with customers, separate from one-way automated notifications.
- SMS and WhatsApp Billing — bundles, WhatsApp monthly plans, the KES 1 price for extra messages, and buying with your plan or later.
- Monitoring — a live view of every notification your own organisation has sent, for confirming a specific message went out or spotting a failing channel.
The channels, in short¶
| Channel | Sender identity | If you haven't configured your own |
|---|---|---|
| Your own SMTP/Brevo sender, or the platform's | Falls back to the platform's shared sender; messages still send, just not from your own domain. | |
| SMS | Your own Africa's Talking account, or the platform's shared shortcode | Falls back to the platform's shared shortcode automatically. |
| Your own WhatsApp Business number only | Does not fall back. WhatsApp messages simply won't send until you connect your own number. See why. | |
| Push | Platform-managed (mobile app notifications) | Always on where the app supports it, nothing to configure. |
Before you start¶
You'll need billing:manage permission on your organisation to change provider settings (your account admin has this by default; see Managing Your Organisation if you need it granted). SMS and WhatsApp additionally need an active subscription with a bundle or plan bought, and WhatsApp needs a connected number. See Channels & Providers. Replying in the WhatsApp Inbox and viewing Monitoring each need their own separate permission; see those pages.
Notification Preferences¶
Reachable from Settings → Notifications, this is where you turn individual notification types on or off, and, for the growing set of types with more than one channel available, choose which channel(s) each one actually uses. Every row shows a small sliders icon: click it to open the channel picker, which always lists every platform channel (Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Push), showing disabled with a "No template yet" note whichever ones this particular notification type doesn't yet support. See Choosing which channel(s) a notification uses for which types support more than email today, and how that list grows over time.