Smart Notifications

Business or higher Web App Mobile App New

Smart Notifications is how you tell the app “ping these specific people when this specific thing happens.” Each alert type has its own configuration card; Owners enable it and pick recipients, then every recipient can tune exactly where they get pinged — email, browser push, or mobile push — from their own settings.

Available on Business and Business Plus. Only Owners can enable alerts and assign recipients. Every assigned team member controls their own channels in Settings → Notifications.

Alert types

Eight alert types, grouped into two flavors:

Broadcast alerts — Owner picks who’s on the recipient list. Six of these.
Direct alerts — Go straight to whoever was just assigned. No recipient list needed.

Broadcast alerts (Owner configures)

Find these on the Smart Notifications page in the web app sidebar.

Quote Request Alerts

Fires: a visitor submits a quote request through your marketing website.

Contents: submitter name, email, phone, project description, plus a deep link to the quote in the dashboard.

Good recipients: whoever handles new leads (owner, sales manager, estimator).

Change Order Alerts

Fires: on change order create, customer approval, or customer rejection. You can filter by which of these events you care about.

Contents: project name, change order number, cost impact, reason, status, customer decision (if any).

Good recipients: project manager, Owner, Bookkeeper.

Project Status Alerts

Fires: when a project status or priority changes (e.g., Planning → On Track, Medium → Urgent). Filter by specific status transitions if you only care about certain ones.

Contents: project name, new status, old status, who made the change.

Good recipients: managers, foremen assigned to the project.

Bid Status Alerts

Fires: when a bid changes status (Pending / Approved / Rejected / Invalid / Accepted). Filter by specific transitions.

Contents: bid name, customer, total amount, new status, who changed it.

Good recipients: Owner, estimator, Bookkeeper.

Resource Assignment Alerts

Fires: when personnel or equipment get assigned to (or unassigned from) a project.

Contents: resource name, project name, the action (assigned / unassigned).

Good recipients: foremen, crew leaders.

Low Inventory Alerts

Fires: when an inventory item drops below its notification threshold.

Contents: item name, current quantity, threshold, last purchase price, suggested reorder.

Good recipients: yard manager, purchasing.

Direct alerts (auto-routed to assignees)

These don’t need a recipient list — they fire for whoever was just assigned, every time. Each person decides per-channel whether they want them.

Task Assignments

Fires: when you’re added to a task (directly or via a crew).

Contents: task name, project, scheduled date and time, a link to open the task.

Schedule Assignments

Fires: when you’re added to a scheduled event.

Contents: event name, date range, a link to open it.

Channels: email, web push, mobile push, Slack

Every alert can reach you on any combination of four channels:

Email — branded email from Excavation Expert with a direct link to the relevant record.
Web push — browser notification (desktop or mobile web) with tap-to-open deep linking. Appears even when the tab is closed, as long as the browser is running.
Mobile push — native iOS / Android notification via the Excavation Expert app. Tap to open straight to the record.
Slack — posted as a rich, color-coded message into a Slack channel of your choice. Unlike the per-person channels above, Slack delivery is configured per alert type — the Owner picks which workspace channel each alert posts into, and the message reaches everyone in that channel.

Every email and push notification is prefixed with your company name so multi-company users always know which account pinged them.

Slack integration

Route any Smart Notification to Slack → Connect your company's Slack workspace and assign each alert type to the channel that makes sense — project updates to #operations, bid acceptances to #sales, quote requests to #leads. Each Smart Notification can post to any channel in your company's Slack workspace, and you can pick a different channel per alert.

Available on the same Business and Business Plus plans that unlock Smart Notifications themselves. Owners install the app once from Settings → Apps, then assign channels from each alert’s configuration card.

Configuring an alert (Owner)

Open Smart Notifications in the web app sidebar.
Find the card for the alert type you want to configure.
Click Configure.
Toggle Enable on.
Pick one or more recipients from your personnel list (only active personnel show; Customer role is excluded).
For some alert types, filter by event sub-type (e.g. Change Order: only on customer approval, not on creation).
Click Save.

Alerts start firing immediately. Newly assigned recipients default to receiving all three channels (email + web + mobile). They can mute any channel from their own preferences — see below.

Who can be a recipient

The recipient picker pulls from your active personnel list. Any active team member with a valid email can be added — you’re not limited to Owners/Managers.

Customer role accounts are excluded (they get their own portal-specific notifications, not these operational alerts).

Managing your own channels

Every user — regardless of role — controls which channels they receive on, for each alert they’re subscribed to.

Open Settings → Notifications on the web, or Settings → Notifications in the mobile app.
Enable browser or mobile push on this device (one-time per device). Your browser or phone will ask you to allow notifications.
For each alert you’re subscribed to, toggle Email, Web, or Mobile on or off.

What you see on the preferences screen

Only alerts you can actually receive show up:

Broadcast alerts appear if the Owner has enabled them AND added you to the recipient list.
Direct alerts (task / schedule assignments) are always listed.

If you’re not subscribed to any alerts yet, ask your Owner to add you — or wait until you have a task or schedule entry assigned.

Mute behavior

If you mute every channel for a given alert, you won’t hear about it at all — email, push, or otherwise. You can re-enable at any time.

If an Owner re-adds you to a recipient list after you’ve muted, your mute is preserved. The app won’t flip channels back on for you without your action.

Limiting assignment alerts to a date window

If you’re getting too many “task assigned” or “site visit assigned” notifications about jobs scheduled weeks out, the Assignment notification window setting lets you only be pinged about assignments whose date falls inside a window you choose.

Find it at the top of Settings → Notifications on web and on the mobile apps. Four choices:

Only today — you only get notified when something is assigned to you for today. Useful when tomorrow’s schedule is a distraction during the workday.
This week (Sun–Sat) — current calendar week.
All — every assignment — no filter; every assignment pings you regardless of date. Use this if you do longer-range planning.
None — mute assignment alerts — turns off task and site-visit assignment pings entirely. You’ll still get any broadcast alerts you’re subscribed to.

The window applies to task assignments and schedule / site-visit assignments only. Broadcast alerts (project status, bid status, low inventory, etc.) are not affected — those follow your channel toggles exactly.

The setting is per person: each user picks their own window. It doesn’t affect anyone else.

Enabling push on this device

Browser and mobile push need a one-time permission grant per device:

Web: click Enable browser notifications on Settings → Notifications. Your browser will prompt you; accept to start receiving. On iOS Safari, you need to have the app installed as a home-screen app (via the Share sheet) for push to work.
Mobile: the native Excavation Expert app asks the first time you open the Notifications screen. Allow when prompted.

If you accidentally denied, re-enable from your browser or device system settings — on iOS: Settings → Notifications → Excavation Expert; on Android: long-press the app icon → App info → Notifications.

Email format

Alerts arrive from a branded sender address, with your company name and logo at the top (if you’ve uploaded a logo under Company Settings). Content is plain, operational, and actionable — no marketing material, no promotional content.

Each email includes a direct link to the relevant record in the app.

Push format

Push notifications (web and mobile) show your company name as a prefix so you always know which account they’re for, followed by a short headline and a one-line description. Tapping the notification opens the app directly on the relevant bid, project, task, or quote.

Web pushes that arrive while the tab is focused show up as an in-app toast instead of an OS banner — and also land in the Inbox tab of the bell menu (top-right of the app) so you can catch up on anything you dismissed.

Deliverability

Email sends through a transactional email provider with high deliverability rates. If you’re not receiving alerts, check:

Spam / junk folder first.
Recipient still on the list in Smart Notifications config (Owner-only view).
Your own personnel record is active.
Alert type is enabled (not just the recipient list populated).
Your own channel toggle in Settings → Notifications — you may have muted the channel for this alert.

Push delivery relies on the device being online. If the device is offline, the push queues with the notification service and delivers when the device comes back online (within a few weeks).

Next steps

Slack Integration Route each Smart Notification to a Slack channel of your choice.

Quote Requests Capturing leads that trigger the Quote Request alert.

Change Orders The flow that fires Change Order alerts.

Materials & Inventory Set thresholds that drive Low Inventory alerts.

Scheduling & Calendar Task and schedule assignments fire direct alerts.