At Pronto, we are on a mission to help the world communicate better. The trick is, people have very different communication styles and preferences, and creating a communication tool that works for everyone, is an awesome challenge to undertake. With this update, we are putting the power into your hands to decide how Pronto communicates with you! We are excited to announce an all-new notification system that will give you greater control from your personal settings, which would then carry on to all of your groups, but also allows you to override those global settings if you choose. We also are changing the general notifications to be a bit more subtle and offering more focused notifications for when members of your groups are trying to get your attention specifically.
After reviewing these new features, we'd love it if you could take a brief moment and let us know how we are doing by taking a very short survey regarding this feature release.
For a growing library of documentation on the new Pronto features, visit here.
Global Notification Preferences
Historically, Pronto has managed notifications only at a group level with the ability to "mute" a group or only receive notifications from other users. With this release, we move notifications up to the user's personal settings and those preferences will serve as the default for all groups the user participates in.
Additionally, we have added a "Do Not Disturb" option that will remove all notifications until you turn off the "Do Not Disturb" option. This will be a toggle found at the very top of your personal settings. When you enable this mode, you will be asked for a time frame ranging between 20 minutes and Until I turn it off. This will override all notification setting both global and group-based effectively silencing everything.
Group Overrides
Group overrides provide all the same options found in the new Global Notification preferences, but these settings will trump those set at the Global level. For example, if I had my Global settings set to only notify me of direct mentions, I would get a subtle gray badge for each message in any of my groups, but I would not receive a push notification for those messages. But if I have a group that every message is essential to me, I could set an override so that I get a push notification for every message shared in that group.
A list of Group Overrides is found on the Global Notification screen.
Muting a group does not constitute a Group Override
Focused notifications for @mentions and @everyone
The ability to focus a message to a single user, or something that looked a little different if sent to the group may have been our most requested addition to Pronto in 2020 and we are thrilled to bring it to you in this release.
A change to notifications was necessary first in order to ensure that these messages appeared a little different from the run-of-the-mill message. With Global Notifications, this is now possible. You can mention a person specifically by typing the '@' or simply by typing the first 4 letters of their name and you will receive a suggestion for users of that name.
Whether a direct mention has taken place, or if alerting a group through typing '@everyone', a slight discoloration to that message will take place to help the user find it more quickly.
