Stay on top of project activity through Notifications and (on mobile) push notifications.
Where to find them: On the mobile app, open the side menu (the three-line icon in the top-left corner) and tap “Notifications”. On the web app, click the bell in the top-right corner of any screen: it opens a short list over whatever you are looking at, with See all notifications at the bottom for the full page.
Either way you get a list of items from across the project, with filter tabs at the top of the full page. The tabs are not the same on both, so use the set for the screen you are on. On the web app they are All (the tab you land on), Announcements, Drawing Updates, Team Invites and Mentions. There is no Unread tab on the web app, and “Drawing Updates” is its name for plan updates, matching its Drawings screen. On the mobile app the tabs are:
- Unread: items you haven’t read yet (the default tab)
- All: everything in the list
- Announcements: admin announcements (urgent ones are highlighted)
- Plans: when someone uploads or updates a drawing
Sent to you, or to everybody: An announcement or a drawing update can be sent to the whole project or only to people the sender chose. One sent to chosen people carries a Selected people label, and nobody it was not sent to can see it at all: it is not in their notifications, on their Home screen or on their phone. Your own “dates moved” notices are like that too: they reach only the people whose tasks moved.
Reading and clearing items:
- Open an item to read it, and it is marked as read. On the mobile app, tap it: announcements open in a detail view and plan updates jump straight to the plan. On the web app, click it: an announcement opens in full, and a drawing update opens the drawing. The list only ever shows the first line or two, so open anything you need to read properly
- On the mobile app the unread count is a badge on the Notifications entry in the side menu. On the web app the bell carries a dot when anything is unread, and the count is read out by screen readers rather than printed
- To mark everything as read at once, tap “Read all” at the top right on the mobile app. On the web app the same button says “Mark all as read”. Either way it only shows when you have something unread
- Pull down to refresh (mobile app only)
Every project at once: Inside a project the bell shows that project’s notifications. Leave the project, by clicking the BuildersAI logo at the top left to reach All projects, and the same bell covers every project instead. For the full list, choose the Mine tab there and then Notifications. It covers every project you are on in that organisation. In the browser it is open to everybody on the job, not just admins. On the phone it is for administrators: All projects, Mine, Notifications. Tap one to read it in full, and it is marked read when you close it.
- Unread first, with anything urgent and unread at the very top, then newest. A dot sits beside anything you have not read
- An Unread (n) button appears when you have unread items. Click it to show only those
- Each row names the projects the message went to, up to three, then “+2 more”. One announcement sent to four jobs is one row naming all four, not four rows
- Click a row that belongs to a single project and it opens that project’s own notifications. A row covering several projects does not open anything, because there is no one project to take you to
- Load more at the bottom brings in the next batch, with a line above it saying how many you are seeing out of how many there are
Marking things read is still the job of a project’s own notifications.
Push notifications (mobile only): The mobile app can send a push notification to your phone when something happens. The web app does not have push notifications.
What you’ll get pushed:
- Announcements (urgent ones use a high-priority alert)
- Plan updates, meaning a drawing uploaded or revised. A batch of fifty is one notification, not fifty. Whoever uploads can tell everybody, only the people they choose (the trades a revision actually matters to), or nobody
- A task or issue being assigned to you. Never when you assign it to yourself
- A reply on a task you are already part of: one you are assigned to, one you created, or one you have commented on before. Not every comment on the project, only the ones on your own work
- Somebody naming you with an @mention in a comment
- Your own dates moving. If a task you are assigned to shifts because a task it depends on moved, you are told, and a cascade that moves twenty tasks is still one notification
- Work that is not ready. At 3pm on a weekday, if a task you are on starts the next working day and something it needs is not done, you are told before you travel. If you are on the thing it needs, you are told what is waiting on you. See the “prerequisites” topic
- Weather over the limit. If a task you are on is weather dependent (a crane lift, a pour, roofing), you are told the first time the forecast puts one of its days over its limits, up to a week ahead, and again at 3pm on the working day before if that day is still over. If nobody is on the task, its project admins are told. See the “weather” topic
- A decision on a timesheet correction you asked for
- An invitation you sent that did not arrive: the email bounced, was marked as spam, or went to an address we are not allowed to mail. It comes once per invitation, and only while you are on that project yourself. Tap it and People opens with the list of people waiting to sign up, where the address can be put right (the “team_management” topic)
- If you are a project admin: a timesheet correction somebody has asked you to decide. Tap it and Requests to decide opens on All projects
- If you are a project admin: a reminder to invite your team, when you are still the only person on a new project a day after setting it up, and once more two days later (the “project_setup” topic)
- On the day you join a project you were invited to: one push saying what to do on your first day, if you have not yet taken a photo, checked in or opened a drawing there. Tap it and the project’s Home opens with the first-day card. It comes once, whatever project, and never once you have used the project
Emails follow the same way. Two days after you sign up, if you still have not taken a photo, checked in or opened a drawing on the project you were invited to, you are emailed once with a way into its drawings, and three days after that once more with a way to where the site is. A week after people you invited sign up, if some of them still have not, you are emailed once for that project saying how many and who. Each stops the moment the person uses the project, and none is sent at night on site.
Somebody you invited who has not signed up is sent the same two emails, a day after the invitation and again three days later, so you do not have to chase them yourself. Each says which address to sign up with. They stop when the person signs up or you take the access away, and they are not sent to an address the invitation bounced from. The drawings email only goes when the project has a drawing, and the location one only when it has an address.
The button in each of these emails opens the page it names: the project’s drawings, or its Home, where the site’s address is. Somebody who has not signed up is taken to sign up first and then straight to that page, not to a list of projects to find it in. Opened on a phone that does not have the app, the page offers it in one line, from the App Store on an iPhone and Google Play on an Android phone, and they can close that and carry on in the browser.
There is no daily digest. What is due today and what is overdue is in My Tasks, which has an Overdue filter, on both the phone and the web. If you want the whole shape of a day rather than your own list, ask SiteBot for the morning briefing: what is not ready to start, what is overdue, the weather, whose cards are lapsing and whether the diary has gone quiet, in one answer. It is a question you ask rather than a notification you receive, which is the point: it arrives when you want it and says nothing on a quiet day.
Being added to a project arrives by email, not as a push. When somebody gives you access to a project you are sent an email saying so, whether or not you have the app yet, because for somebody who has never signed up an email is the only thing that can reach them. It usually comes from the person who added you, and replying reaches them rather than us. It does not buzz your phone or land in your notifications: the project is simply in your list the next time you open the app.
Some of these never reach the list, so do not go hunting for them. Assignments, replies, @mentions, not-ready warnings, weather warnings, timesheet corrections waiting on a decision and the reminder to invite your team are push only: they reach your phone and leave nothing behind. What does land there is announcements, drawing updates, your own dates moving (listed as Task Dates), a decision on your own correction (Timesheet Decision) and an invitation of yours that did not arrive (Invitation Not Delivered). Those last three have no tab of their own, so look under All. The web app’s Team Invites tab stays empty, because being added to a project comes by email instead.
There is no switch for the two timesheet ones. You only get them when a correction is already yours to make or yours to decide, so they are always on. An invitation that did not arrive has no switch either, because until somebody puts the address right the person you invited cannot get in, and neither does the reminder to invite your team, nor the one first-day push. Turning off the Push Notifications master switch still keeps all of these off your phone.
Turning push notifications on or off:
- On the mobile app: open the side menu (☰), tap “Profile”, then “Notification Settings”. On the web app: click your avatar in the top right, click “User settings”, then “Notifications”
- Toggle Push Notifications at the top: this is the master switch
- Under Notification Types, toggle each type on or off individually:
- Announcements
- Plan Updates
- Task Assignments. One switch, five kinds of news: a task or issue being assigned to you, replies on tasks you are already on, your own dates moving when a linked task shifts them, the 3pm warning that work you are on is not ready to start, and the warnings that the forecast is over the weather limits of work you are on. Turning it off stops all five
- Below that the two screens differ. On the mobile app, Registered Devices lists every phone signed in to your account, and you can remove a device to stop it receiving push notifications. On the web app there is no device list. It has an Email section instead, holding its own master switch and two summary emails, “Weekly project summary” and “Daily time corrections”. All three are off until you turn them on, and the mobile app has no email switches, though an administrator can turn on the daily time corrections email from the Time on site report
The two emails, and who gets them (browser only): Both are off until you turn them on, and both need two switches: turn on Email notifications first, because nothing sends unless it and the individual one are both on. The weekly summary is not set on the phone, and the daily one only through “Email me daily” on the Time on site report, so use a browser for the switches: avatar, User settings, Notifications, then scroll to Email.
Weekly project summary. Monday morning, in your own timezone. One email per organisation, covering every project you are an admin on: what is overdue, what is still open, how many snags are open, what is blocked, when each site last had a diary entry, and how many certification cards have expired or fall due inside 30 days. Sites with no diary for three days or more are called out. The certification count covers admins and members only, not subcontractor cards. When something is overdue the subject line leads with the count, along the lines of “5 overdue across 2 sites”.
Daily time corrections. Each morning, around 7am UK time. It lists the check-ins with no check-out and the check-outs with no check-in on the sites you administer, grouped by site, with the person’s name and the date. Those records count no hours at all until somebody fills in what happened, so they are missing from your time reports rather than wrong in them. Open the Time tab on the project to put them right. On a day with nothing to correct, no email is sent.
Both go only to people who administer at least one project. If you administer none, turning them on sends you nothing.
Product update emails. Now and then we email to say what has changed in BuildersAI and whether the phone app needs updating. They go to everybody working on a live project in BuildersAI, whether or not you ticked “Email me about new features and product updates” when you signed up. Somebody who only has a demo project is not sent them. To stop them, use a browser: avatar, User settings, Notifications, then turn off the switch under From BuildersAI at the bottom. It is on until you turn it off, and it is separate from the Email notifications master switch. Every product update email also has an Unsubscribe from product updates link at the foot, which works without signing in, and your mail app’s own Unsubscribe button does the same. Once you have stopped them, we send no more until you turn them back on. None of these stops invitations, sign-in codes or email about your own work.
Why am I not getting push notifications?
- Make sure the Push Notifications master toggle is on
- Make sure the specific Notification Type is on (e.g., Announcements)
- Check your phone’s OS Settings → BuildersAI → Notifications and make sure they’re allowed
- Push only works on the mobile app, not the web
Ask me: “What’s the most recent announcement?” or “What’s happened on the project this week?” and I’ll look it up. Inside a project I can’t read your notifications themselves. On the web app, and from All projects on an administrator’s phone, it is different: open me from All projects and I can catch you up on announcements and notifications across the projects listed there, including just the unread ones. Ask me “what have I missed?” and one message sent to four jobs comes back as one line naming all four. Marking things read is still your own job, not mine.