Notification Glossary

What Inlrn can send

There are two server notification flows and one reminder that stays on the phone.

General notification

A message written in the Admin panel: product news, maintenance notices, editorial messages or a nudge. Every manual message is a general notification; there is no type to choose.

It uses the General notifications daily limit and the reader's master push switch. It can use push, inbox and banner together.

Personalised suggestion

An article chosen for one reader and greeted with their own name, such as “Hi Adi, you might be interested.” The article comes from the recommender; the text is rendered on the server.

It uses the Personalised suggestions daily limit and the chosen times. It is never a general announcement, and the admin does not choose a type.

Daily learning reminder

A reminder scheduled by the phone itself, not sent by the server. The reader turns it on, chooses a time and chooses the weekdays. It says “Your daily read is waiting” and “A minute of learning is ready on Inlrn.”

It is not a push, has no daily limit and is not controlled by quiet hours. It has its own switch in the App.

The path a server notification takes

A campaign becomes one job per person, one delivery per device and channel, and then events reported by the phone. The daily reminder is local and does not use this path.

Before a job is sent, the server checks the campaign's state, the reader's push switch, quiet hours, the relevant daily limit and whether an active device still exists.

Composing a general notification

The Admin panel no longer asks for a type. Everything composed there is a general notification.

Title

The headline the reader sees. In a collapsed Android notification only about twenty characters fit; the full headline is shown when the notification is expanded.

Body optional

A second line under the title. Article notifications are commonly headline-only, so this can be left empty.

Image

The picture shown with the notification and the banner thumbnail. Article images are fetched by our server, resized to 1200×630 and re-encoded as a small JPEG, then served from our own address — because many publishers block direct loading and Android silently drops pictures around 1 MB.

Uploads: JPEG, PNG or WebP up to 5 MB, deleted after 15 days unless a campaign that has not ended still uses them.

Channels

Choose any combination of push, inbox and banner. They are explained below.

Destination deep link

Where the reader lands on a tap: Home, Discover, Read Lists, Profile, or an article by its ID. Only these destinations are accepted.

Send now / Schedule for

Send now dispatches as soon as you press Send. Schedule for queues it for the chosen date and time. The server checks for due campaigns once every 60 seconds, so a scheduled send can be up to about a minute late.

Banner shows from / until advanced, optional

The window in which the in-app banner may appear. Leave either empty for no boundary. Outside the window the banner is not shown; the push itself follows its send or scheduled time.

A campaign also expires 24 hours after it is created or scheduled unless an expiry is set. These fields are for a manual campaign; the banner lifetime in Personalised suggestions is a separate setting.

Test mode

When on, only the test list can receive the campaign. Test mode is the safe way to check a message end to end before sending it to the full audience.

Audience — who receives a general notification

Platform

Android, iOS, Web, or any of them. Web push is not enabled yet, so a Web-only campaign currently reaches nobody.

App version

An exact version match, for example 1.0.0. Use it when a message only makes sense on a build that contains the feature.

Locale

The phone's language tag, for example en-IN. Narrows a campaign to one language or region.

Active in last (days)

Only people whose installation was seen within that many days — a simple way to skip dormant devices.

Interests

Topic names, comma-separated (for example Science, History). A person qualifies when their interests match.

Specific emails

Exact account addresses. Used for small, deliberate sends rather than a broad audience.

Test list

Test mode sends only to these accounts. The effective list combines the server's own environment entries with the editable list in Settings. An entry may be an email address, a username, or a numeric user id; installation IDs may also be listed. The editable list only adds to the server entries, never removes them.

Environment

The server you are talking to — local, dev or beta. The page shows it and you cannot change it; a campaign created on one server can never be sent to another.

For server notifications, the reader has one delivery control: the master push switch in the App. There is no category switch to turn off separately; internal categories are used only for our limits and reports.

Channels — where a server notification appears

After you press Send

Campaign

One message you compose or one automatic personalised batch. Statuses are draft (saved, not sent), scheduled (waiting for its time), sending, sent (dispatched), cancelled and failed.

Job

The work item for one person. A campaign to ten people creates ten jobs. Each job is sent or skipped, and the reason for a skip is recorded against it.

Delivery

The record of one channel for one device. A campaign using all three channels to a person with one phone creates three deliveries.

Delivery status

Status	What it means
accepted	The push provider took the message and returned a receipt. The phone may still not display it if its permission is off.
skipped	Refused before sending: the daily limit is used, quiet hours are active, the reader's push switch is off, there is no active device, or the campaign is no longer sendable.
failed	The provider rejected it — typically a token from an uninstalled app. A permanently dead token disables that device.

Inbox and banner deliveries are recorded as accepted without a provider; only a push has a provider message ID.

Provider message ID

Firebase's receipt number for an accepted push. It proves the message was handed over — not that the phone displayed it.

Events

What the phone reports back: received (arrived while the app was open), opened (the reader tapped the notification or banner), clicked, dismissed, opted_out.

Bell dot

Means unread inbox items, not “an unopened campaign”. Opening the campaign anywhere marks its inbox item read.

Device

One app installation on one phone, identified by an installation ID and a push token. It records whether the phone granted notification permission. A reinstall is a new device.

Daily limits and quiet hours

General notifications limit

How many general notifications one person may receive per local day. 0 means no limit. Only accepted push deliveries count; inbox and banner deliveries do not.

Personalised suggestions limit

How many personalised suggestions one person may receive per local day, and the maximum number of times that can be configured. 0 means no limit, up to the hard maximum of ten times. Only accepted push deliveries count; inbox and banner do not. The portal refuses a schedule with more times than the limit and never silently raises the limit.

Quiet hours

A window, in the reader's own time zone, during which server notifications are held. They are retried when the window ends. A new account's starting window comes from Settings → Defaults for new accounts (initially 21:00–08:00). The local daily reminder is not affected. The Scheduled page shows a held campaign's next attempt as “deferred until … · quiet hours”.

Frequency

The old Minimal / Balanced / More control has been removed from the App and the portal. The sender does not use it. The two daily limits above are what control volume.

Personalised suggestions

A few article notifications a day, each greeted by the reader's own name. The article comes from the recommender; the message is rendered on the server. The admin does not choose a type.

Enabled

Off by default. While off, no batch is built. When on, each configured time builds one batch for eligible readers.

Times

One to ten wall-clock times. Each time builds one batch. The number of times may not exceed the Personalised suggestions daily limit.

Layout

How the headline and greeting are arranged: headline as title with the greeting as body, greeting as title with the headline as body, or the greeting alone.

Greeting template and placeholders

The sentence around the name. {first_name}, {last_name}, {name} and {title} are replaced for each reader. An unknown token is left exactly as typed, and a headline containing braces is inserted literally.

Name form

Which part of the account's display name is used: first word, last word, or the whole name. Only the display name exists — there is no separate first-name field.

Fallback word

Used when an account has no name, usually an OTP account. Default “Friend”. If it is emptied too, that reader receives the headline alone; “Hi ,” is never sent.

Time mode

Each reader's own timezone means 09:00 wherever the reader is; someone in another country gets their own 09:00, never a past one. Fixed means everyone receives at the same wall-clock time in one chosen timezone.

Oldest article allowed

How old an article may be and still be chosen for a suggestion.

Banner stays

How long the in-app banner for a personalised suggestion remains available. This is separate from a manual campaign's banner window.

Repeat the same article after

The dedupe window. 0 means never repeat the same article. The history is written when the batch is built, so a message later skipped by a limit or quiet hours still counts as used.

Live preview

Renders the message from the values currently on the form — saved or not — using the selected layout, greeting, name form and fallback word. It refreshes as you type, states which layout and name it used and writes nothing.

Preview as a real account

Shows the article a real account would receive right now, chosen by the same rules the batch uses. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent.

Test run

Builds one batch immediately and sends it only to the test list. It writes no history, so the same article may be chosen again. It can reach a real phone.

Container campaign

The neutral campaign record that holds a time's jobs. Its title is only seen on the admin pages; the real title and body live per person. The Scheduled page groups the batch by it.

Daily learning reminder

What it says

Title: “Your daily read is waiting.” Body: “A minute of learning is ready on Inlrn.” The Android channel is called “Daily learning reminder”. Tapping it opens Inlrn; it does not open a specific article.

When it appears

At the time and on the weekdays the reader chooses, in the phone's local timezone. One repeating weekly reminder is scheduled for each selected day. A new account starts with the reminder off; when the reader turns it on, the starting time is 08:00 and all seven days.

What it is not

It is not a server push, has no daily limit and is not controlled by the push switch or quiet hours. It is scheduled on the phone, so it can fire offline. Android may delay it when battery saver is on, and force-stopping the app cancels it; iOS Focus modes can suppress it.

The App's notification settings

Three sections, no notification types and no frequency or timezone section.

Push notifications

The single switch for remote push messages from Inlrn. It controls phone push deliveries; inbox and banner are in-app surfaces. It does not control the daily reminder.

Daily learning reminder

Its own switch, time and weekdays. The reader sees only this behaviour, never an internal reminder category.

Quiet hours

On/off, start and end. Server notifications wait until the window ends; the daily reminder is separate. Times use the phone's time zone.

Permission

If the phone has blocked notifications, the App shows an Enable prompt. Once permission is granted, the prompt is removed.

The portal's settings

Sending

The kill switch stops every server notification send immediately. Scheduled campaigns wait; nothing is lost.

Daily limits

Two numbers: General notifications and Personalised suggestions. 0 means no limit. The suggestions limit also caps the number of personalised times.

Personalised suggestions

The schedule and copy described above: enabled, times, layout, greeting, name form, fallback, time mode, article age, banner lifetime, dedupe, preview and test run.

Defaults for new accounts

The quiet-hours window and the starting reminder time and days, copied into an account with no stored notification settings. There are no category checkboxes. Existing accounts keep their own settings.

Test mode and the server

The editable test list, the read-only environment, the server's own test list, the push transport and the signed-in role. Changes to the test list apply to the next test send and are audited.

Scheduled page

Shows a Personalised tag on automatic article campaigns. Every other row is a general notification; the raw internal category is not shown.

Internal bookkeeping — what the reader never sees

The system still records an internal category for every notification, because the two daily limits and the reports need it. It is machine metadata, not a reader setting and not a choice in the composer.

In one sentence: a general notification is a message we write; a personalised suggestion is an article chosen for one reader; the daily reminder is a local phone reminder. The reader sees notifications, not our category names.