Push Notifications on Your Phone

What it is

A push notification is the alert that appears on your phone's lock screen when something happens in Joby — a customer texts you, a colleague @mentions you in team chat, a new email lands in your inbox, or a reminder comes due. It reaches you when the Joby app is closed and your phone is in your pocket. That is the whole point of it: you do not have to keep the app open to find out.

You control all of it from one screen inside the phone app: Settings (the last tab in the bar along the bottom) -> Settings -> Notifications.

This is a different thing from the bell at the top of the screen inside Joby, and different again from desktop browser alerts. If you want the whole picture of every place Joby can tell you something, read Notifications. This guide is only about alerts on your phone.

When to use it

• You are a field worker out on jobs all day and need to know the moment a customer texts back.
• You are an office agent who steps away from the desk and cannot watch the bell in the browser.
• You are the owner and want new enquiries and reminders to find you at the weekend.
• Your phone is buzzing too much and you want to keep the important alerts and switch off the noisy ones.
• A colleague says "I texted you hours ago" and you never saw an alert — this is the screen that tells you why.

If you work mainly at a computer and want alerts in Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge instead, use the Browser Notifications card under Settings›My Account›Account Settings. That is covered in Notifications.

Before you start

• The Joby CRM app has to be installed on the phone. Search for Joby CRM in the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play (Android). See Mobile App for installing and signing in.
• You have to be signed in. Alerts are addressed to your login, so the app cannot sign this phone up for them until you have logged in at least once.
• Everyone gets this page. The notification settings screen is available to every signed-in user, including subcontractors. There is no permission to switch on first.
• Your role still decides what you are told about. Alerts about parts of Joby your role cannot open are not sent to you — email alerts, for example, only go to people whose role has Emails switched on under Settings›People›Team Roles.
• The phone's own permission is separate from Joby's switches. Your phone asks once whether Joby may send you notifications. If that was ever declined, Joby cannot ask again — you have to allow it in your phone's own Settings app.
• Opening Joby in a phone browser will not do. In a browser the page shows a Browser Notifications card and a line reading "For push notifications on your phone, install the Joby CRM native iOS or Android app."

Step-by-step

Turn alerts on for this phone

1. Open the Joby CRM app and sign in.
2. Tap Settings in the bar along the bottom of the screen (the last tab).
3. Scroll to the Settings group and tap Notifications. It has the description "Push notification preferences" under it.
4. The first card is Mobile Summary. Look at the row called Enable Push Notifications. The small line underneath it says Not enabled yet, Enabled, or Denied in device settings.
5. If it says Not enabled yet, tap the Enable button on the right, then tap Allow on your phone's own prompt.
6. The Enable button is replaced by a green Enabled badge with a tick. That is the sign this phone is now signed up.

Tapping Enable while you are looking at Joby in a web browser instead of the app gives you the message "Push notifications require the native mobile app."

Choose which alerts you want

1. Stay on the same page and scroll to the second card, Notification Types.
2. Switch off anything you do not want to be interrupted by. Every switch saves on its own — there is no Save button. A "Notification settings saved" message confirms each change, and a small "Saving…" line appears at the bottom while it is working.
3. To stop everything at once without touching the individual switches, turn off Push Enabled in the Mobile Summary card. Its description reads "Master switch for push delivery" — with it off, nothing gets through, no matter what the switches below say.

Pick the sound

1. In the Mobile Summary card, find the Push Sound row — "Sound used for mobile push alerts".
2. Tap the drop-down and pick one of Default, Bell, Chime, Ding or Tri-tone.
3. It saves as soon as you pick it. Send yourself a test (below) to hear it.

Send yourself a test

1. Under Push Tests there is a row of buttons: Test SMS Push, Test Bell Push, Test Chat Msg, Test Mention, Test Reaction, Test Reply, Test Email and Test Support. (The letters in brackets after the Push Tests heading just say which kind of phone you are on.)
2. Tap the one you want to prove. These buttons stay greyed out until Enable Push Notifications shows Enabled.
3. A line appears underneath reading something like Sent 1, failed 0, and the alert itself arrives on the phone a moment later.
4. There is also a plain Send Test Notification button at the bottom of the card. That one is fired by the phone itself, so it proves the phone can display an alert even if nothing is reaching you from Joby. It shows as "Joby CRM — This is a test notification" after about a second.

How to check it worked

• This phone is signed up: the Enable Push Notifications row shows a green Enabled badge with a tick instead of the Enable button, and the line underneath reads Enabled.
• Joby has a way to reach this phone: a small grey line appears at the very bottom of the page reading Device token registered. If that line is missing, no alert can arrive no matter what the switches say.
• A switch saved: a "Notification settings saved" message appears each time, and the switch stays where you put it if you leave the page and come back.
• A test got through: the result line under the test buttons reads Sent 1, failed 0, and the alert appears on the lock screen with the sound you chose.
• The tap goes to the right place: pull down the alert and tap it — Joby should open on the matching screen rather than the home screen.

Common mistakes

• Expecting alerts on an old phone. Joby keeps one iPhone and one Android phone signed up per person, per company. Sign in on a new phone and the old one quietly stops getting alerts — which is what you want when someone changes handset, but a surprise if you were relying on a spare.
• Turning off "Internal Chat Messages" and expecting to still get mentions. The four team chat switches are separate. Switching off Internal Chat Messages stops every ordinary message, and Internal Chat Mentions is what carries an @mention. Leave mentions on and messages off if you only want to be interrupted when someone names you.
• Assuming this changes the bell too. These switches only control what reaches your phone's lock screen. The bell inside Joby keeps collecting everything either way, so nothing is lost — you just are not buzzed about it.
• Testing while the app is open in front of you. Send the test, then lock the phone or swipe Joby away, so you see the alert the way you will in real life.
• Reading "Push test failed" as a broken account. It usually means this phone is not signed up. Tap Enable, allow the phone's prompt, confirm Device token registered. appears at the bottom, and try again.