Notifications & controller messages

Two related things live here: notifications (how impressBox tells you something needs attention, like a screen going offline) and controller messages (sending a message to a screen's on-site controller).

Notifications — knowing when a screen needs attention

Your account watches your screens for you, so you don't have to stare at the dashboard:

• Offline alerts. A screen is flagged as offline if it hasn't reported in within a set time (a threshold you can tune — by default about an hour). That's your cue to check the location's power and network (see Screen is offline — first checks).

• Daily volume check. Once a day, at a set hour, the system can check that screens are at a sensible volume — useful for in-store audio where a muted or zeroed screen would otherwise go unnoticed.

These watchdog checks are part of how impressBox keeps a fleet healthy alongside the on-device self-healing (auto-reboots and watchdogs) described in Self-healing: auto-reboots & watchdogs. To change the thresholds or who gets alerted, ask impressBox.

Tip: pairing alerts with a consistent device-naming scheme (by store/location) makes it obvious which screen needs attention — see Organising devices with tags.

Controller messages — sending a message to a screen's controller

For installations that use an on-site controller (for example the on-screen Control app on interactive kiosks and tills), you can send a message to that controller from impressBox. It's a one-off message — handy for prompting the staff at a location, or for triggering controller-side behaviour during setup and support — not a stored setting.

This is one of the remote actions impressBox can send to a screen; the full set of one-off commands (reboot, display on/off, volume, screenshot, and messages) is in All remote commands (reference). For the separate emergency-access app, see The Emergency Control App.