Push Notifications on Your Phone

5 minutes

Introduction

A customer walks in and reception marks them as arrived. If you are in the back room mixing colour, you have no way of knowing until you look at a screen.

Push notifications fix that. The Luminate app can send a short banner to your phone or tablet the moment something happens that you need to know about. You choose what you are told about, and on which devices, and nobody else's choices affect yours.

Push notifications are per person, not per salon. Turning them on for yourself changes nothing for your colleagues.

Who this is for: Any staff member who uses the Luminate app on a phone or tablet.

What you'll learn:

Turning notifications on for a device
Choosing what you are notified about
Adding and removing devices
What appears on a locked screen

Time to complete: 5 minutes

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

The Luminate app installed on your phone or tablet
Signed in to the app on that device

Push notifications only work in the app. Opening Luminate in a web browser will show you the settings page, but the "Turn on notifications for this device" button will not appear.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Open Your Notification Settings

Open the Luminate app on the device you want to be notified on
Tap your name at the bottom of the sidebar menu
Tap Settings
Tap the Notifications tab

Step 2: Turn On Notifications for This Device

Tap Turn on notifications for this device
Your phone will ask whether Luminate may send you notifications. Tap Allow

The device now appears under Your devices, showing its name and when it was last used.

Repeat this on every device you want to be notified on. Your phone and the salon iPad are separate — turning it on for one does not turn it on for the other.

Step 3: Choose What You Are Notified About

Below the device card you will see one card for each way we can reach you:

Email me about — sent to the address on your profile
Push to my devices — shown on the phones and tablets you turned on above

Each card lists the same things that can happen. Switch on the ones you want.

Everything is also recorded inside Luminate whether you switch these on or not. These switches only control whether we interrupt you.

Tap Save when you are done. Nothing is saved until you do.

Step 4: Remove a Device You No Longer Use

Under Your devices, tap the bin icon next to any device to stop sending to it.

You do not need to do this when you sign out. Signing out stops notifications to that device automatically, and signing back in starts them again.

What Appears on a Locked Screen

Notifications say as little as they can. A banner shows something like:

Customer arrived Jane Smithson has arrived.

The customer's name is there so you know who is at the desk without unlocking the phone. Nothing else is. Phones sit on counters, and anyone walking past can read a locked screen, so a notification never shows:

The service they booked
Anything they wrote to you
A phone number, email address, or price

The full detail is there when you tap the banner and the app opens.

Sharing a Device

If a salon iPad is passed between staff, notifications follow whoever is signed in. When you sign in, the iPad becomes yours; when your colleague signs in, it becomes theirs. You will never receive your colleague's notifications on a device they signed into after you.

Common Questions

Will I get a notification for a walk-in I just booked myself? No. You are standing at the desk with the customer, so there is nothing to tell you.

I have three services booked back to back for the same customer. Do I get three notifications? No. One customer arriving produces one notification, however many services they booked.

Someone voided a bill and the appointment went back to "arrived". Did that notify anyone? No. Only a genuine arrival notifies — a customer moving from booked or confirmed to arrived.

I said "Don't Allow" by mistake. How do I fix it? On an iPhone or iPad, the question is only asked once. Go back to the Notifications tab and tap Open device settings, then turn notifications on for Luminate there. On Android, tap Turn on notifications for this device again.

Why is the "Push to my devices" card greyed out? You have not turned on notifications for any device yet. Do that first, at the top of the page.