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Alert contacts

An alert contact is a person (or a shared inbox or phone) that alerts can notify. Contacts are separate from the users who log in: a contact can be a user, but it doesn't have to be. A night guard who never logs in can still be texted. See Managing users for how users and contacts relate.

Contacts are managed on Alerts → Alert Contacts. You need a role assigned to Add/Edit Alert Contacts to create or edit them.

Add a contact

  1. Go to Alerts → Alert Contacts and click Create New Contact.
  2. In the New Alert Contact dialog, either:
    • check Import Information from Account User and pick the user from the list, to copy their name, email and mobile number; or
    • fill in Name:, Email: and Phone: yourself. Choose the country from the flag if the number is outside the US.
  3. Field 1: to Field 4: are free text for your own use (employee number, role, shift).
  4. Click Save.

A new contact receives nothing until you add them to a schedule (see Schedule groups) or pick them on an alert.

Tip

Use a mobile number that can receive texts. A landline can take voice calls but not texts; if you give one, texts to it fail and the contact shows Texts failing. Once a number is marked invalid, Whisker.io stops texting it and skips that person in a one-at-a-time sequence.

Edit a contact

Select the contact's row and click Edit Selected Contact. Change the details in the Edit Contact dialog and click Save. Contacts linked to a user show the user's first, middle and last name.

Edit Alerts opens the older device-by-device list for signing a contact up to alerts (described in Managing users). For alerts that use a schedule group you set up yourself, add the person to the group's schedules instead.

Changing a phone number or email clears any delivery problem recorded against the old one (see below), so the contact is tried again from scratch.

The Status column

The Status column shows whether Whisker.io can actually reach each contact:

Status What it means What to do
Ok Nothing is wrong Nothing
Opted out of texts date The person replied STOP to a Whisker.io text on that date. No more texts are sent to them Only the person can opt back in, by texting START. Click Send opt-in instructions to email them how
Texts failing Texts to this number fail (wrong number, landline, disconnected) Correct the phone number
Calls failing Voice calls to this number fail Correct the phone number
Email failing Emails to this address are being rejected Correct the email address

A contact with more than one problem shows them all, separated by commas. A problem appears after a permanent failure, or after the second failure in a row. Hover over a status to see the last error, when the problem started and how many times sending failed.

Note

You cannot opt someone back in to texts on their behalf. US carriers only allow the person themselves to do it, by texting START to the number the alerts come from.

Schedules show the same problems next to each person: a crossed-out phone for an invalid number and a crossed-out speech bubble for someone who replied STOP.

Delivery problem reports

If a text, call or email to a contact keeps failing, or someone replies STOP, Whisker.io tells the people who can fix it, so a bad number doesn't go unnoticed until the night it matters.

  • Daily report: at 7:00 in the morning (in the account's time zone) Whisker.io emails a list of contacts that newly became unreachable, with the subject "Whisker.io: n alert contact(s) cannot be reached".
  • Monday reminder: every Monday, a reminder lists everything that is still unresolved.
  • At once, when an alarm reaches nobody: if a one-at-a-time alarm runs out of people and nobody acknowledged, the same people get an email straight away (see When nobody answers).

The reports go to users holding the role assigned to Receive Delivery Problem Reports under Control Panel → Roles. If no role is assigned there, they go to the holders of Add/Edit Alert Contacts, and if there are none, to the account administrators. See Roles and permissions.

A problem resolves by itself when the contact's number or email is changed, when the person texts START, or when a later message to the same address gets through.