Scheduling Web Push Notifications

AlertElevate lets you schedule notifications to be sent at a specific time in the future, giving you more control over delivery and audience targeting.

Scheduling from the Dashboard

Set Your Time Zone:
Configure your local time zone in Account Settings (default is UTC).
Date & Time Format:
- Modern browsers (e.g., Chrome) provide a date/time picker.
- Manual format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM (e.g., 2025-08-14T10:09).

Scheduling via API

Date Format: Use ISO 8601 format:
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.000Z (e.g., 2025-08-14T10:09:00.000Z).
Time Zone: API requests use UTC unless another time zone is explicitly provided.

Time Limits

Notifications can be scheduled up to 5 days (120 hours) in advance.

Targeting & Lazy Evaluation

Recipients are determined at send time, not at scheduling time.
Example:

At scheduling: "user1" and "user2" have tag tag1.
Before send: "user2" unsubscribes, "user3" subscribes with tag tag1.
At send: Notification is delivered to "user1" and "user3".

Billing

Charges apply when the notification is sent, not when scheduled.
Ensure you have enough credit at send time to avoid cancellations.

Alternatives to Scheduling

Consider these methods to avoid the 5-day limit and reduce cancellations:

Event-triggered Notifications: Send based on real-time events (e.g., check-out from a booking).
Background Jobs: Use workers like Sidekiq (Ruby) to queue future jobs that trigger immediate sends.
Cron Jobs: Automate recurring notifications based on database queries (e.g., 15 days after sign-up).

Cancelling Scheduled Notifications

From Dashboard:
Go to your project → Notifications → Open the scheduled notification → Click Cancel.
Via API:
Use DELETE /notifications/NOTIFICATION_ID/cancel.

Notifications may also be cancelled automatically if your quota is exceeded.

By scheduling strategically and using event-based alternatives, you can ensure timely, relevant notifications without hitting time or quota limits.