Alerts and notifications
Rules, channels, cooldowns, and how to avoid teaching yourself to ignore them.
An alert rule is a condition, a set of actions, and a cooldown. The condition is what to watch, the actions are how you are told, and the cooldown is what stops one event becoming forty messages.
What you can watch for
| Condition | Fires when | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Geofence exit / entry | An asset crosses a zone boundary | Theft, misuse, arrival logging |
| Tamper / wire cut | Power is removed or the case is opened | Someone found the tracker |
| Low battery | Voltage falls below your threshold | Catch a dying battery before a customer does |
| Speed | Sustained speed over a limit | Fleet policy, highway towing |
| Inside a zone | The latest position falls inside (or outside) the zones you pick | Scopes any other condition to particular places |
| Impact / rollover | G-sensor exceeds threshold | Damage you want to know about before the return |
| Offline | No report for a set period | A unit that has quietly stopped |
A speed limit that only applies in one place
Conditions on a rule are ANDed, so a Zone condition next to a Speed condition gives you a limit that exists only inside that shape: 15 km/h in the no-wake bay, with nothing to say about the same boat doing 50 on open water. Both are read from the same position report, so a boat cannot trip it by being fast in one place and inside the zone in another.
The Speeding in a zone recipe builds it for you: draw the zone on the Geofences screen first, then pick the zone and the limit. The zone's own schedule still applies — a zone that is only active on summer weekends cannot fire the rule on a Tuesday in March.
One condition can name several zones, which is usually what you want: if the same 15 km/h applies in three bays, that is one rule with three zones selected, not three rules. Inside means inside any one of them; Outside means outside every one. Because it stays a single rule it also keeps a single cooldown, so an asset crossing between two of your zones cannot text you twice.
Choosing channels
SMS for the things you would get out of bed for. Email for everything else. Push if you live in the mobile app. The rule of thumb: if you would not act on it at 2am, it does not belong on SMS.
Cooldowns
Every rule has a cooldown — the minimum gap between repeat alerts for the same asset. Set it to how long it would take you to respond. Fifteen minutes for a geofence exit is usually right; a battery warning can sit at twelve hours.
Three alerts you always read beat eleven you have trained yourself to swipe away. Start with geofence exit and tamper, then add only what you have actually wanted.