Notifications

Notifications are short messages you can push to one or more display groups. Depending on the player setup, a notification can show as an on-screen overlay on the displays themselves, as an email to recipients, or both.

Where to find it: sidebar → Admin group → Notifications.

What you can do here

• Send a one-off notification to one or more display groups.
• Send a notification by email instead of (or in addition to) on-screen.
• Mark a notification as an interrupt so it pushes through immediately rather than waiting for a quiet moment in the schedule.
• Schedule a notification to be released in the future.
• Review past notifications and delete ones you no longer need.

The list

The page is a single table of every notification sent so far. Columns:

Column	Meaning
Subject	The message title. Always shown.
Message	The body of the notification, truncated to fit. Visible on medium screens and up.
Created	When the notification was sent (or scheduled).
Type	Badges for Email and Interrupt. No badge means a standard on-screen notification.

If no notifications have been sent yet, the page shows an empty state with a button to send your first one.

Sending a notification

1. Click the + button in the top-right of the page.
2. Fill in the form:
   • Subject (required) — keep it short. This is what people see first.
   • Message — the body. Optional, but usually worth including.
   • Release date — leave blank to send immediately, or set a future date and time.
   • Is Email — Yes to send the notification as an email to recipients in addition to displaying it.
   • Is Interrupt — Yes to push the notification immediately, interrupting whatever is currently playing on selected displays.
   • Display groups — tick the groups you want the notification to go to. You can pick more than one.
3. Click Send Notification.

The notification is sent through OTS Signs and appears on each display after its next check-in.

Note

Players check in on a schedule controlled by the display profile. On-screen notifications appear the next time the player checks in, which is usually within a minute or two. Email notifications go out as soon as the request is received.

Interrupt vs. standard

A standard notification waits until there’s a natural break in the current layout before appearing. An interrupt notification cuts in immediately. Use interrupts for safety messages or genuinely urgent information; use standard notifications for everything else so you don’t disrupt customer-facing content.

When to use email

Email is useful when the message is for staff (for example, “Today’s lunch menu has changed”) rather than for whatever is on the screen. The email goes to the contact addresses configured for the targeted display groups.

Deleting a notification

Right-click a row and choose Delete. To delete several at once, tick the checkbox on each row and use the Delete N button that appears in the bulk action bar.

Deleting a notification removes it from the history. If the notification has already been pushed to displays, the on-screen overlay disappears at the player’s next check-in. Emails that have already been sent can’t be recalled.

Common tasks

”I want to tell every screen in the building about a road closure tomorrow”

Send a notification with the closure details, set a release date for tomorrow morning, mark it as an interrupt so it shows immediately when reached, and target the display group that includes every screen in the building.

”I need to email staff that the menu has changed without showing anything on screen”

Send a notification, set Is Email to Yes, leave Is Interrupt as No, and target the display group whose contacts include the right people. Even though the on-screen part will appear too, you can target a display group that has no active screens, or use email-only as a follow-up.

See also

• Display Groups — choose who receives notifications.
• Schedules — for content that should appear repeatedly, not just once.