Every notification in a learning journey belongs to an activity. To see or change one, open that activity in your learning journey and go to its Notifications tab. Most activity types share the same core — an Invitation when the activity opens, plus optional deadline reminders — and a few types add notifications of their own. Here's what each type can send, and who receives it.
The notifications most activities share
Micro trainings, quizzes, surveys, and assignments all start from the same set:
Invitation — the email or SMS a participant gets when the activity opens to them. It's the one notification almost every activity sends.
Deadline reminders — if the activity has a deadline, it comes with two reminders: one 24 hours before the deadline and one when it arrives. Both are on by default once a deadline is set, and you can turn either off. See How deadlines work for the details.
Everything here is yours to edit — the subject, the message, the sender name, the button, and whether it goes as email, SMS, or both. See Which Knowly emails can I edit, and what can I change inside them? for what you can change inside each one.
What each activity type adds
Assignments add one notification the others don't: when a participant submits their work, their manager gets an email letting them know, with a button to open and review it. Knowly sends this one automatically and its wording is fixed — you can turn it off, but you can't rewrite it. It only comes into play when the learning journey involves managers.
Group meetings have the fullest set, because they coordinate people around a time. Alongside the Invitation, a group meeting can send an invite to the group leader and to the members, a reminder to book the meeting, a reminder to confirm it, a confirmation once it's booked, and a nudge as the meeting starts soon and when it starts now. You choose which of these are on and edit their wording under Notifications, the same as any activity. For the bigger picture, see How to create group meetings.
Instructions are the exception: an instruction doesn't open a task, so it has no Invitation. It simply sends the message you write — as email, SMS, or both, to participants, managers, or both. See Direct messages: an activity that just sends information.
Manager-registration activities ask a participant to enter their manager. The participant gets an Invitation to do that, and the manager they enter gets a short confirmation that they've been added.
How many emails a manager actually gets
When a learning journey involves managers, how their notifications land depends on the journey type. Depending on the activity, a manager can also be notified as their people move through it.
In a cohort journey, a manager gets one email per activity covering all of their people. If you want it to name each participant, add the participant-name variable to the message — otherwise it reads as though it's about a single person.
In an individual journey, a manager gets a separate stream per participant, so a few can land close together.
The assignment submission email above is always one per submission, whichever journey type you're in.
The manager's experience in Knowly goes into this in more depth.
Other notifications Knowly sends
This article covers the notifications your activities send. Knowly also sends a few that don't belong to an activity:
Inbox notifications for admins who follow a journey — a new post in a thread you follow, an @mention in an internal comment, or a nudge when it's a good moment to send a manual reminder. These appear in your Inbox inside Knowly, not as email. See What is the Inbox? and Manage your notification preferences.
Account and registration emails — the sign-in link, a password reset, and the confirmation someone gets when they register for a learning journey. Which Knowly emails can I edit, and what can I change inside them? sorts out which are yours to change.
If a recipient wants to know why they got an email, Why did I get this email from Knowly? is written for them.
When they send — and why one might not
This article is about what each type sends. For when a notification goes out — and why an expected one sometimes doesn't arrive — see When Knowly notifications send — and why one might not.