A notification is built from a handful of parts, each with its own settings — much like the elements on a Micro training slide. This article walks through every part of a notification and what you can change in each, so you can find the one setting you're after. To edit any of them, open the activity in your learning journey, go to its Notifications tab, and open the notification you want.
Most notifications have an email version and — if you turn it on — an SMS version. You edit the two separately. The parts below are the email; the SMS section at the end covers what's different there.
The parts of every email
Subject. The subject line the recipient sees. Write your own, up to 255 characters, and drop in variables like their name.
Sender name. The name the email appears to come from. It uses the learning journey's default, or you can set a custom one for this notification and revert whenever you like. To change the sender for the whole journey instead, see Changing the notification sender for a learning journey.
Message body. Everything between the subject and the footer. You build it from content blocks you add, reorder, and style — the next section lists them.
The fixed frame. Every email carries the Knowly logo at the top and a short line at the bottom noting it was sent using Knowly. These are the same on every email and aren't edited per notification.
The content blocks you can add to the body
Each block has its own settings, and you can stack and reorder them:
Text. A paragraph with basic formatting. Variables work here too.
Large heading and Small heading. Text headings in two sizes.
Image. A single image.
Callout. A quote-style block that sets a line apart from the rest of the message.
Button. A call-to-action button — see the next section for its label and where it points.
Divider. A horizontal line between blocks.
Spacer. Adjustable empty space between blocks.
Key info. A highlighted box for the essentials. On an activity with a deadline it can show the deadline; on a group meeting it shows the meeting's key details.
A couple of blocks only appear where they fit. On a manager's notification you can add a block that lists the people that manager oversees, so the email can name each of them.
The button and where it points
A notification can have more than one button, and you add one the same way as any other block — hover where you want it in the editor, click the +, and choose Button. If you removed the button that came with the template, that's how you add it back.
You write each button's label yourself. Where it takes the recipient depends on the notification:
On a normal Invitation, it opens the activity — the destination is fixed, so you only write the label.
On a manager notification, it opens the destination that notification is built around — the manager's overview, or, on an assignment, the participant's submission to review.
On a Direct message (an instruction activity), you choose the destination: the learning journey Home screen, the File library, a file, a thread (the Threads tab or one specific thread), or an External website you paste a link to.
If your journey uses files, a button can also link straight to one.
Personalization variables
Anywhere you write text — the subject, a text block, the button label — you can insert variables Knowly fills in for each recipient: their first or full name, the activity's name, and the learning journey's name. On an individual learning journey, a manager's notification can also use the employee's name. See Personalization using text variables for the full list and how they work.
The SMS version
Sent by SMS, a notification has a smaller set of parts:
Sender name. A short name the text appears to come from — 3 to 10 characters, letters and numbers only, no spaces, and it can't start with a number.
Message. A single short message, up to 255 characters. Variables work here too, but emojis aren't supported.
Link. An optional link — none, the learning journey home screen, or an external website.
For when to use each channel, see Choosing email or SMS for a notification.
Preview
As you edit, a live preview shows the notification the way the recipient will get it. You can switch the preview between the real variables and made-up example names, so you can see how a personalized line reads.
What you can't change per notification
A few parts are the same on every Knowly email — the logo, the footer line, and the values Knowly fills in, like names, dates, and the journey title. And one notification is fixed: the email a manager gets when a participant submits an assignment. You can turn it off, but you can't rewrite it. For which emails are yours to edit and where, see Which Knowly emails can I edit, and what can I change inside them?.