Crew Builder Notifications

StationOne notifies the relevant people automatically at a few points in a deployment’s lifecycle — by email, in-app, and push. This guide explains when those notifications are sent, who gets them by default, and how a unit can nominate specific members or groups to receive them instead — so notifications don’t have to go to every admin.

How You’re Notified

Every Crew Builder notification below is sent on multiple channels at once, not just email:

• In-app — appears in the notification bell in the top navigation, with an unread count badge. This always happens regardless of notification preferences — it’s a passive inbox, not an interruption.
• Email — sent if the recipient’s notification preferences allow it (see User Notification Preferences below).
• Mobile push — sent to the mobile app if installed, gated by the same preference as email.
• Browser push — sent to any browser the recipient has enabled push notifications in, regardless of preference (there’s no separate toggle for it).

When Notifications Are Sent

Crew Approval Needed

When a manager assigns a member from another unit to a crew seat, that member’s home unit is notified that a crewing needs approval.

This doesn’t fire when a brigade admin crews their own vehicle with their own members — that assignment is auto-approved, so there’s nobody to ask. See Approve or Reject Crew Assignments for the full approval workflow.

Batched, not per-seat: filling several seats from the same unit in one sitting (e.g. crewing all 5 positions on a vehicle) doesn’t produce 5 separate notifications. StationOne waits a few minutes after the first assignment, then sends one notification listing everything still awaiting that unit’s approval at that point. See How Batching Works below.

Crew Rejected

When a supplying unit rejects a seat, the deployment’s own unit (the one running the deployment) is notified that the seat needs to be reassigned. Like Crew Approval Needed, several rejections reviewed in one sitting are batched into a single notification rather than one per seat.

Deployment Ready — Unit Admins

When a deployment is marked Ready for Deployment, the deploying unit is notified to confirm every vehicle and crew slot is locked in. See Mark Ready for Deployment.

Deployment Ready — Crew Members

At the same time, every member with a filled crew seat on that deployment gets their own notification confirming their role, vehicle, destination, and shift — so nobody has to check the app to find out they’re rostered. This one isn’t batched — every crewed member already gets exactly one notification about their own seat, so there’s no seat-count noise to reduce.

Standby Crews — Crew Members

When a unit admin clicks Notify crew on a pre-planned standby crew, each member on it is told which appliance, role and period they’re on, with the whole crew listed. If the crew changes afterwards, Notify changes sends an updated message to the people affected and a removal notice to anyone taken off. These are sent only when the admin clicks the button, are not batched, and always go to the individual member. See Pre-Plan Standby Crews.

Standby Crews — Needs Attention

When a unit’s standing crew or standby entry can no longer be used — the vehicle went out of service or onto a deployment, or a member was pulled onto a deployment, archived or removed from the unit — the unit’s Crew Builder contacts are notified, with the reason. Nothing is removed automatically. See When a Crew Can’t Be Used.

How Batching Works

Crew Approval Needed and Crew Rejected are batched per unit, per deployment, so a burst of seat changes doesn’t flood the recipients with one notification each:

1. The first assignment (or rejection) in a burst starts a short waiting window (a few minutes).
2. Any further assignments or rejections for the same unit on the same deployment during that window don’t start their own notification — they just add to what’s waiting to be reported.
3. When the window ends, one notification goes out listing everything still outstanding at that point, across every channel (email, in-app, push).

If someone approves, rejects, or reassigns a seat before the window ends, that seat is simply left out of the notification — there’s no point notifying about something already resolved. A seat that’s reassigned again afterward starts a fresh window of its own.

In practice this means: crew a whole vehicle in one sitting and the supplying unit gets one email a few minutes later listing every seat, not five separate ones.

Default Recipients

Unless a unit has nominated its own recipients (see below), Crew Approval Needed, Crew Rejected, Deployment Ready — Unit Admins, and Standby Crews — Needs Attention all go to the same default group for the relevant unit:

• All brigade/group/district/region admins in that unit
• The organisation admin(s), if the unit belongs to an organisation

Deployment Ready — Crew Members and Standby Crews — Crew Members always go to the individual member on the seat — there’s no unit-level override for those, since it’s already targeted to exactly one person.

Configuring Custom Notification Recipients

A unit can nominate specific members and/or groups to receive its Crew Builder admin notifications (Crew Approval Needed, Crew Rejected, Deployment Ready — Unit Admins, Standby Crews — Needs Attention) — across all channels — instead of every admin. This is useful once a unit has a dedicated logistics officer or strike-team coordinator who should own this rather than all admins being notified.

Note

This setting appears for any unit that can use Crew Builder — it manages deployments itself, can pre-plan standby crews, or has had a vehicle or member pulled onto someone else’s deployment.

Steps to Configure

1. Navigate to Brigade Settings
2. Click the General tab
3. Scroll down to Crew Builder Notifications
4. Check any Groups and/or Individual members who should receive these notifications
5. Click Save Changes

If nothing is selected, the unit falls back to notifying all its admins (the default behaviour above) — so leaving this unconfigured never causes notifications to go silently unrouted. This setting controls in-app, email, and push together — there’s no separate recipient list per channel.

Groups are the same custom member groups used elsewhere for training and event invites (see Training Notifications) — if you already have a group set up for your logistics team, you can reuse it here.

User Notification Preferences

Crew Builder notifications still respect each member’s personal notification preferences for email and mobile push:

• Crew Approval Needed, Crew Rejected, and Deployment Ready — Unit Admins follow the Admin category
• Standby Crews — Needs Attention follows the Admin category
• Deployment Ready — Crew Members and Standby Crews — Crew Members follow the Vehicle Bookings category

The in-app notification (bell icon) is unaffected by these preferences and always appears, and browser push has no per-category preference at all — see How You’re Notified above.

See Manage Email Notifications for how to review or change email and mobile push preferences.

Common Issues

A nominated member isn’t getting emails or push notifications

Check that the member has an email address on their account — StationOne can’t email a member without one, and they’ll be silently skipped for email even if nominated. Also check their personal notification preferences haven’t disabled the relevant category (above). They’ll still see the notification in-app either way.

Every admin is still getting notifications after nominating specific people

Make sure Save Changes was clicked on the Crew Builder Notifications section — the setting only takes effect once saved. If the list looks correct but notifications are still going wide, confirm you saved it on the right unit (check impersonation/acting-unit if you manage more than one).

I can’t find the Crew Builder Notifications section in Brigade Settings

It only appears if your unit can use Crew Builder — as a manager running deployments, as a unit that can pre-plan standby crews, or as a supplying unit that’s been pulled into a deployment. See the note above.

Not receiving mobile or browser push

Confirm push notifications are enabled for StationOne in the mobile app’s device settings, or that the browser has been granted notification permission for the site. The in-app bell will still show the notification even if push never arrives.

The notification didn’t arrive immediately after assigning or rejecting a seat

This is expected — see How Batching Works. It arrives a few minutes later, once the batching window closes, and may cover more than the one seat you just changed if others were assigned or rejected in the meantime.

Summary

Trigger	Who is notified by default	Configurable?
Member assigned to another unit’s vehicle	Supplying unit’s admins	Yes — per unit
Supplying unit rejects a crewing	Deploying unit’s admins	Yes — per unit
Deployment marked Ready for Deployment	Deploying unit’s admins	Yes — per unit
Deployment marked Ready for Deployment	Each crewed member individually	No — always the assigned member
Admin clicks Notify crew / Notify changes on a standby crew	Each member affected, individually	No — always the member
A standing crew or standby entry becomes unusable	Unit’s Crew Builder contacts (admins by default)	Yes — per unit

Related Guides

• Approve or Reject Crew Assignments
• Create and Manage Deployments
• Pre-Plan Standby Crews
• Manage Email Notifications