A notification goes out at the moment it's scheduled, to whoever is on the recipient list right then. What sets that moment is the date or event the notification is tied to — usually a date, but sometimes a registration, a deadline, or something a participant does. When an email you expected doesn't arrive, the reason is almost always in one of those two — the timing or the recipient list — not a fault. This article helps you tell which.
What a notification is tied to
Every notification belongs to an activity and goes out based on one of these:
a date — a fixed calendar date in a cohort learning journey, or a date counted from each participant's anchor date in an individual journey, so the same activity reaches different people on different days. This is how most notifications go out, including the Invitation that opens an activity to a participant.
a participant or manager registering — an Invitation can instead be set to send as soon as someone signs up.
a deadline coming up, or something a participant does, like submitting an assignment.
For which notifications each activity type can send, see What notifications does each activity type send?. For how anchor timing works, see Anchor dates in a learning journey.
When a scheduled notification goes out
Once an activity is scheduled, you don't need to do anything else — Knowly sends it on the scheduled date to everyone on the recipient list at that moment. The list is read when the notification goes out, not when you set it up, so anyone added in between is included.
Before that date, the activity shows as not sent. That's the normal waiting state, not a sign something went wrong. There's also no single button that sends a whole learning journey at once — each activity is published on its own, as covered in Scheduling and publishing a learning journey.
When someone joins after the date has passed
Because an individual learning journey counts each person's schedule from their own anchor date, an activity's date can already be in the past by the time someone is added. Knowly doesn't send it after the fact on that original date. What happens instead depends on how the person joined:
They register themselves, or a manager registers their team. An activity that's already due goes out to them right away.
You add them by hand, or change their anchor date. For each already-due activity, Knowly asks you to choose: Send now, or Publish now (no notification will be sent). The second is the default, so if you click through quickly, the activity opens to them but no email goes out.
An automatic sync or a connected list adds them. Already-due activities open to them quietly, with no email.
So a participant or manager who "never got" an early email was most likely added in a way that opened the activity without sending — not a delivery failure. See Adding a participant after launch and Self-registration: share a link and let participants sign themselves up.
Why a notification might not have gone out
When an email or SMS you expected didn't arrive, check these in order:
It isn't the scheduled date yet. "Not sent" before the date is normal.
The date was relative and already past when the person joined, so the activity opened without an email — see above.
No one was on the recipient list at the scheduled moment. Being on the learning journey isn't the same as being on a specific activity's list.
The activity hasn't been published. Publishing is per activity; there's no journey-wide send.
You're looking for a way to email everyone at once. Knowly doesn't have a general broadcast separate from your activities. To send a manual nudge while a journey is running, use Smart reminders.
To check whether a specific person was actually sent an activity — and whether they've opened it — open the learning journey's Engagement tab, or look in Past activities. A status of Invited, not opened means the notification was sent and the person simply hasn't opened it yet; only Not sent means nothing went out. So someone sitting at Invited, not opened has already been emailed or texted — there's nothing more to send. For what each status means, see Reading statistics: what the metrics mean.