Notifications

A business application needs to warn people: an opportunity changed stage, a request arrived for approval, a report is ready. In Keplin that is done through two channels, which exist in every app and are neither created nor deleted: one delivers on screen, to whoever is using the app at that moment; the other delivers by email, to whoever is not.

They are turned on or off in the App settings, Notifications section:

1. Open the app.
2. Click the App settings icon, at the top of the side tree.
3. In the settings tree, inside the Application group, choose Notifications.

#In-app notifications

The first channel delivers inside the application. It has a single switch, Channel enabled, and the behaviour is this:

• whoever has the app open receives the notice on the spot, without reloading anything;
• whoever does not receives it at the next login — the message is kept and does not get lost;
• unread messages appear in the bell of the app's navigation bar.

#Email notifications

The second channel sends email, and it serves two things: the notifications the app's logic sends by email, and the password recovery of the app's users. Both go out through the sending server configured right below, in the same section.

Fill in the SMTP block:

Field	What it is
Host	The address of the email server.
Port	465 with a secure connection, 587 for STARTTLS.
Secure connection (TLS)	On for SMTPS (port 465); off for STARTTLS (port 587).
User and Password	The sending credentials. The password is stored encrypted and never comes back to the screen — leaving it empty means "keep the current one".
Sender address (from)	The sender that appears to whoever receives.

#Sending a notification

Notifications set out from the app's logic — from a script or from a workflow step. In scripts there are two tools, one per channel (see the Scripts SDK).

On screen, with notify.send. The recipients are app users: users takes usernames, and roles expands to every member of a role.

r = notify.send(
    "Opportunity won",
    subtitle="Câmara Municipal de Aveiro — €18,400",
    body="The proposal was accepted. The contract moves on to signature.",
    users=["ana.rocha"],
    roles=["direcao"],
    data={"url": "/oportunidades/42"},
)
# r = {"recipients": 4, "delivered": 2}

The delivered counts who was connected and received it right away; the rest receive it when they come in. The data travels with the message — it is what lets clicking the notice take the person to the right place in the app.

By email, with notify.email. Here to accepts free addresses, and users/roles resolve to the email of the app's users.

r = notify.email(
    "Pipeline summary",
    to=None,
    users=None,
    roles=["direcao"],
    text="There are 12 open opportunities, 3 close this week.",
    html=None,
)
# r = {"accepted": ["ana.rocha@exemplo.pt"], "skipped": []}

The skipped says who was left out for having no email filled in on their record — worth looking at that list when someone complains about not receiving.

#The bell in the app's bar

The bell that shows the unread messages does not appear by itself: it is a menu type added in the app's navigation editor, with the automatic count of the unread. It is described in App navigation.

#How long they are kept

Messages pile up. Each app decides how long it keeps the history in the Record rotation section of the app settings — the same one where the retention of the activity logs is set. Zero days means "keep forever".

#Frequently asked questions

The person received nothing on screen. Check three things, in this order: the In-app notifications channel is enabled in the app settings; the Real-time notifications switch is on in the platform Settings; and the person has a session open in the app. Without real time the message is not lost — it just arrives later.

Can I warn everyone at once? Yes: instead of names, pass roles with the role you want. Whoever is in that role at the time of sending receives it.

Do one app's notifications appear in another? No. The messages and the history belong to the app where they were created, and the recipients are users of that app.

Can I create more channels beyond these two? No. The channels are fixed, and it is deliberate: what changes from notice to notice is the recipient and the text, not the plumbing. To separate subjects, use the recipients' roles.