Notifications

The Notifications screen is where you post short updates about the event, such as a schedule change or a reminder, and send them as a push notification to people who follow the event in the Vote4Dance app. Open it from Manager → Audience → Notifications.

There is one Notifications screen per event, not per competition.

Emails are separate. What Vote4Dance emails to dancers, and how to email the participants of a competition, is on Emails and the check-in QR code.

What it sends

A notification is one piece of text. It reaches people in two ways:

Where When What it shows
The event page: the Notifications section on the public event page, and the Updates card in the app As soon as you save it, whether you send it or not The date and your text. The three newest are shown first; the rest are one tap away (Show more on the web page).
A push notification on the phones of the event’s followers Only when you press Send notifications The event name as the title and your text as the message. Tapping it opens the event in the app.

No email is sent, and nothing appears on the screens in the hall.

Anyone can read a saved notification, including people who are not signed in. Do not save a draft you don’t want the public to see yet.

Who gets the push

The push goes to the event’s followers. A follower is someone who has tapped Follow competition on the event in the Vote4Dance app.

A follower gets the push only if:

  • they are signed in to the Vote4Dance app on a phone, and have allowed notifications there;
  • they have not turned off Competition updates (“Updates for competitions you follow.”) in their notification settings. It is on by default. See Building blocks.

At the top of the screen, “This competition has N followers” shows how many people follow the event. Hover over it to see the first eight names. Some followers may not get the push, for the reasons above, so the push can reach fewer people than this number.

You cannot choose recipients. Every follower gets every notification you send. Dancers, clubs and judges who don’t follow the event get nothing.

Writing a notification

You need the Manager app on the event. The screen is read-only once the event is Closed or Archived.

  1. Press Create notifications. A new row opens at the top of the list.
  2. Choose the type: Schedule updates or Competition updates. The type is a label in this list; it does not change who gets the push or what the push looks like.
  3. Write the text.
  4. Press Save changes.

The notification is now on the event page. It has not been sent.

Your text cannot contain the characters <, > or \. If it does, saving fails with “Malformed Request”.

Sending

Press Send notifications (the phone icon) on a saved notification, then confirm.

The push goes out at once, and the row shows “Notifications was sent out on” with the date and time, in the event’s time zone. The Send notifications button then disappears from that row, so each notification is sent only once.

The row is marked as sent even when no follower can receive a push. In that case no push goes out, but the notification stays on the event page as before.

If you press Send notifications again from an old window, or press it twice, you see “This update has already been sent, or is being sent right now.” Nothing is sent a second time.

If sending fails:

  • When nobody has received it yet, you see “The update could not be sent. It is still unsent; press Send notifications to try again.” The row stays unsent, so press Send notifications again to retry.
  • When it reached only some followers, you see “The update reached only some followers before sending failed.” The row is marked as sent, so the followers who already have it don’t get it twice. The others may not have been notified. If that matters, create a new notification with the same text and send it.

Scheduling

There is no scheduling. A notification is sent when you press Send notifications, and the date shown with it is the date you created it. To send an update at a given time, write it in advance, save it, and press Send notifications at that time. It will be public from the moment you save it.

History

The list on the screen is the history of the event’s notifications, newest first. Each row shows the date it was created, the type, the text, and “Notifications was sent out on…” if it has been sent.

  • Edit changes the type and text of any notification, sent or not. The change shows on the event page at once. A push that has already gone out is not changed or sent again.
  • Delete is in the row while you edit it. It removes the notification from the list and the event page. A push that has already gone out stays on people’s phones.

Limits

  • Push only, to followers of the event in the Vote4Dance app. No email, SMS or in-hall display.
  • One send per notification. To send the same news again, create a new notification.
  • No scheduled sending.
  • No choice of recipients: not by competition, class, club or role.
  • The push title is always the event name. There is no separate title field.
  • Plain text only, without <, > or \.
  • No count of how many phones the push reached.