Notifications and the icon's number

Both HallPro apps can send a notification to a phone when something needs its person, and keep a number on the app’s icon for how many things are waiting — like a mail app does.

Committee app: new enquiries, bookings paid online, cancellations made in the hirers’ app, invoices paid, safety checks coming due and door codes to change. Each member only hears about their own areas and their own halls — a treasurer is not told about the door code. The number is enquiries waiting for an answer.

Hirers’ app: each invoice emailed to them, and each date the hall confirms. The number is their invoices still to pay.

Choosing what to hear about: once notifications are on, the same panel lists every kind, each with a tick box. Each phone keeps its own choices, so the booking secretary can have everything on her phone and only enquiries on her laptop. “Invoices paid” starts off; everything else starts on.

Nothing to set up on the website. Each person turns them on in their own app — Settings in the committee app, Your account in the hirers’ app — with Turn on notifications, then Send a test to check. The panel says what the phone still needs.

iPhone and iPad: the app must be added to the Home Screen from Safari and opened from there first; Apple does not allow notifications from a web page in a Safari tab. Then turn them on from inside the app.

Android: the icon shows a number on Samsung and most phones, and a dot on Google Pixel. That is up to the phone, not HallPro.

The number goes up the moment something arrives. It goes down when the app is next opened, because phones only accept notifications they can show. Signing out takes the number off and stops notifications to that phone.

For example: On Saturday evening somebody asks for the small room on the website. The booking secretary’s phone buzzes with “New enquiry — Sarah Jones — Small room, Sat 10 Oct, 14:00” and the HallPro icon shows 1. She taps it, the enquiry opens, she confirms it, and the 1 disappears.

Questions people ask

I pressed Turn on notifications and nothing happened.
On an iPhone, check the app was opened from its Home Screen icon, not from Safari. On any phone, if you once said Don’t allow, the panel says Blocked: allow notifications for the app in the phone’s own settings, then come back.

The number on the icon is out of date.
Open the app. It checks with the website every time it is opened and once a minute while it is open, and puts the number right.

Does it cost anything?
No. The notifications go through Apple’s, Google’s or Mozilla’s free push services, straight from your website. They are part of free HallPro.

Does the phone need the app open?
No — that is the point. The app has to have been installed and notifications turned on once; after that they arrive with the app closed.