Notifications and Messaging

Choose which channels your marketplace uses, which automated messages go out, how they are worded, and how buyer and seller messaging is moderated.

Babylon sends automated messages to your buyers, sellers and staff when things happen on your marketplace: a bid is placed, a payment falls due, an item ships. This guide covers the screens that control those messages: which channels are switched on, which messages are sent and when, how each one is worded, the defaults new users start with, and how buyer and seller messaging and public Q&A work.

The screens involved are:

Settings → Communications: channel switches and a health check that explains why a message might not be sending.
Settings → Notification Rules: which messages are sent, on which channels, and whether they are batched into digests.
Settings → Notification Templates: the wording of each message.
Settings → Business Settings, Experience tab: Notification Defaults and Messaging & Q&A.
Settings → Business Settings, Advanced tab: the Email Provider choice under Provider Preferences.

Before you start

Every screen in this guide needs the manage tenant settings permission. If a screen is missing from your sidebar, or opens with an explanation that you do not have access, ask an account owner to adjust your role (see Team members and roles).

Some delivery capability is controlled by Hammerd at platform level rather than by you. Push, Web Push, SMS and WhatsApp delivery all need platform-side setup before they can carry messages, and the notification service itself can be paused platform-wide. The Communications screen tells you when this is the case. You cannot change platform settings yourself: contact Hammerd support if a platform-level item is blocking you.

Communications: channels and health

Open Settings → Communications. The page has four parts.

The health summary

The banner at the top shows Health as Healthy, Needs attention or Degraded, with a count of critical issues and warnings, and Active channels (for example 2/6). Below it, four tiles summarise Active channels, Event types (how many kinds of automated message exist), Overrides (how many rules you have changed, including how many are disabled and how many are digests) and Template overrides (how many messages you have reworded).

If the platform notification service is paused, a notice appears above the tiles. Notifications are not being sent means nothing is going out at all. Notifications are being recorded but not sent means messages are being logged but not delivered. In both cases your channel, rule and template settings are saved and will apply once the service resumes. Only Hammerd can resolve this, so contact Hammerd support.

Needs attention

This panel lists the most likely reasons a message did not send. Typical entries:

All channels are disabled for this tenant: nothing can be delivered until you switch at least one channel on.
Push is enabled for the tenant, but disabled platform-wide (and the equivalents for Web Push, SMS and WhatsApp): you have switched a channel on but Babylon has not made it available on the platform yet. Either switch the channel off or contact Hammerd support.
Push is enabled but not configured (and the equivalents for Web Push and WhatsApp): the channel is available but its platform setup is incomplete, so sends will fail. Switch it off and contact Hammerd support.
Template overrides exist, but templates are disabled: your reworded messages are saved but will not be used until custom templates are enabled on the platform. Contact Hammerd support.

When nothing is wrong, the panel shows All clear. Each issue has a link (for example Disable push for tenant) that jumps to the channel switches further down the page.

The Platform configuration panel beside it is read-only. It shows which platform capabilities are on, so you can see at a glance whether a channel you want is available.

Switching channels on and off

Scroll to the Channels section at the bottom of the page. There is one toggle per channel:

Email: on by default. The main channel for transactional and compliance messages.
In-app: on by default. Notifications in the bell and inbox inside your storefront.
Push: off by default. Mobile push notifications.
Web Push: off by default. Browser push notifications.
SMS: off by default. Text messages, which also depend on recipient consent.
WhatsApp: off by default. WhatsApp messages sent from provider-approved templates.

Change the toggles and save. You see Channels saved and the health checks rerun straight away, so if switching a channel on creates a new problem you see it immediately.

These switches decide whether your marketplace may use a channel at all. They never widen what an individual message does: if a rule only sends a message by email, switching on SMS does not add an SMS version. Per-message channels are set in Notification Rules.

Sender domains

The address your emails are sent from is managed on Settings → Domain Settings, under Email Sender Domains. Until you add and verify your own sender domain, Babylon sends from a platform-hosted sender domain. See Custom domains for the steps.

Notification Rules: which messages are sent

Open Settings → Notification Rules. This is the catalogue of every automated message your marketplace can send.

Reading the table

Use the Area dropdown to filter by functional area (for example bidding or payments), or leave it on All areas. Each row is one event type, with these columns:

Area and Audience: what part of the marketplace the message belongs to and who receives it.
Event Type: the name of the event that triggers the message.
Default: the platform default, including its category, severity, channels, template, dedupe window and batch window.
Override: anything you have changed for this message. A dash means you are using the default.
Effective: what actually happens now, after your changes. suppressed means the message is switched off.
Action: the buttons described below.

Switching a message off or on

Click Disable on a row to stop that message being sent to anyone. Click Enable to turn it back on. You see Event disabled or Event enabled as confirmation.

Disable a message when it does not suit how you run your sales, for example a reminder that duplicates something you already send yourself. Be careful with payment, security and compliance messages: buyers and sellers rely on them.

Changing a single message's rules

Click Override on a row (or Edit if you have already changed it) to open the Notification Overrides editor for that message. The main fields are:

Enabled: switch the message on or off.
Override channels: turn this on and pick the exact Channels for this message. If you turn it on and select no channels, the message produces no delivery at all.
Override escalation / fallback: define Escalation steps, each with After (seconds), a Channel and Only if nothing sent yet. For example, try push first, then send an email 60 seconds later if nothing was delivered. Each step is rechecked at the time it runs against consent and your channel switches.
Dedupe window (seconds): suppresses repeat copies of the same message inside this window. Leave blank to use the platform default. 0 turns deduplication off.
Summary/batch window (seconds): if above 0, copies of this message are collected per recipient and sent as one summary later. The Digests section described below is an easier way to set this.

The Notification Overrides list itself is not in the sidebar. You reach it from the Override and Edit buttons, or from the Message overrides card on the Communications page. It lists only the messages you have changed. To go back to the platform default for a message, open the row's menu and choose Reset (delete override).

The editor also has a Custom policy (new event type) toggle for defining a message for an event that has no platform default. This needs events to be produced for that name, which is not something you can set up from the admin panel, so contact Hammerd support before using it.

Digests: batching noisy messages

Scroll to the Digests section below the table. A digest replaces one notification per event with a single periodic summary per recipient.

In Messages to batch, pick one or more event types.
Choose a Digest window: Hourly (3600s), Daily (86400s), Weekly (604800s) or Custom. For Custom, enter a Custom window (seconds) of at least 60.
Choose Digest channels: Email, In-app or both. These only apply to messages where you have not already chosen channels in an override. Email is recommended.
Click Apply preset, read the confirmation and click Apply to these event types.

Before you confirm, understand what a digest does: recipients stop getting an alert per event, so individual alerts are delayed by up to the window you chose (up to seven days on a weekly window). It applies to everyone who receives those messages. A digest does not switch a disabled message back on and does not replace channels you have chosen explicitly. Applying a preset again replaces the window on those event types.

Digests suit high-volume, low-urgency messages. Do not batch anything time-critical such as outbid alerts near the end of a sale or payment deadlines.

Messages currently batched lists every digest in place. Click Remove next to one to go back to sending that message as it happens.

Notification Templates: how messages are worded

Open Settings → Notification Templates. The table lists the platform templates (Scope: Platform) alongside any you have rewritten (Scope: Tenant), with the channel, template key, locale, version and whether each is active. You can filter by Channel and Active.

Rewriting a message

Find the platform template for the message and channel you want to change, then click Customise.
The channel, template key and locale are fixed. Edit the content fields for that channel (see below) and leave Active on.
Save. You see Override created and land on your new version.

The content fields depend on the channel:

Email: Subject, Body (HTML) and Body (Text fallback). The HTML body is prefilled from the text version, so it is never blank. Keep both versions in step: some email clients only show the plain text.
In-app: Title and Message.
Push and Web Push: Title and Body. Keep the body short, as many devices truncate it.
SMS: Message, plain text only. A body is required. One SMS segment is roughly 160 characters.
WhatsApp: Provider template ID and Provider language (default en_US). WhatsApp uses templates approved in your WhatsApp provider, not free text, so enter the identifier of the approved template. The template ID is required.

You can have only one active version of a message per channel and locale. If you already have one, use New Version on your tenant row instead of Customise.

Using variables

Templates can include placeholders that are filled in when the message is sent, written in double braces, for example:

Your payment for {{listing_title}} is due by {{deadline}}.

The names above are illustrative only. Each template has its own list of allowed variables: open your template and click Allowed Variables to see them, or look at the Allowed variables line in the editor. If you use a placeholder that is not on the list, saving fails with Template contains unknown placeholders. Remove or correct the placeholder and save again.

Editing, previewing and testing

New Version (on your tenant rows): edits create a new version rather than overwriting the old one, so your history is kept. Platform templates cannot be edited directly.
Preview: shows the message rendered with sample values.
Send test to me: available on a template's view page and its preview page. It emails a copy, rendered with sample values, to your own account address only, using the same sender as the real notification. Tests of non-email channels arrive as an email showing what that channel would display.

If a test does not arrive, check the message shown. Test not sent with a note that your address is on the suppression list means your own address is on your marketplace's suppression list, and real notifications to it are dropped too. Contact Hammerd support if you think it should not be there.

Going back to the default wording

On an active tenant template, click Revert to Babylon wording and confirm. Your wording stops being used immediately for every recipient and the message goes back to the platform wording. Your versions are kept, so you can reactivate one later by editing it with Active switched on.

Notification Defaults for new users

Open Settings → Business Settings, go to the Experience tab and expand Notification Defaults. These settings are the starting preferences for users who join after you save. They do not change the preferences of existing users, who manage their own.

Under Default categories (applies to new users), each toggle decides whether new users are opted in to that kind of notification. All are on by default: Bidding, Messages, Fulfillment, Reminders, Commerce, Security, Moderation, Seller Money and Admin.

Under Default quiet hours (applies to new users), turn on Enable default quiet hours to give new users a quiet period, then set:

Start (HH:MM) and End (HH:MM) in 24-hour time, for example 22:00 and 07:00. If the end is at or before the start, the quiet period runs over midnight.
Timezone: the time zone the quiet hours are measured in.

The section also links to Communications, Notification Rules and Notification Templates. Click Save Settings at the bottom of Business Settings to apply your changes.

Messaging & Q&A

On the same Experience tab, expand Messaging & Q&A.

Messaging System: the master switch. When it is off, the other three settings are hidden and messaging is off across your marketplace.
Public Q&A on Listings: buyers can ask public questions on a listing and sellers can post public answers that everyone can see.
Private Messaging (Post-Auction): buyers and sellers can message each other inside the order after a purchase. This is not shown on listing pages, so it cannot be used to negotiate before a sale.
Messaging Moderation: how questions and private messages are checked before they appear.

The moderation levels do the following:

None: everything publishes immediately and nothing goes to a moderation queue.
Automatic (the default): everything publishes immediately, and content the system flags is queued for review. High-severity content can still be blocked.
Manual: every message and question is held for approval before it is published.
Strict: flagged content is held and blocked until reviewed. Clean content publishes immediately.

Choose Manual if you want to see everything before buyers do, accepting that replies are delayed until someone approves them. Choose Strict or Automatic if you want conversations to flow and only need to review problem content.

Held and flagged content appears in Auction Ops → Moderation Queue, where staff with the moderate content permission can use Approve Content or Reject Content. Questions and conversations themselves are in Auction Ops → Questions and Auction Ops → Conversations.

Click Save Settings to apply your changes.

Email Provider

On the Advanced tab of Business Settings, Provider Preferences includes Email Provider, with two options: Amazon SES and SMTP. The on-screen hint recommends Amazon SES.

Do not change this setting unless Hammerd support has asked you to. There are no SMTP server fields in the tenant admin, and depending on platform configuration your email may still go through the platform default provider even if you choose SMTP. If saving fails with Failed to save settings and a message about invalid provider configuration, the provider you picked is not available for your account: set it back and contact Hammerd support.

Troubleshooting and common questions

A customer says they did not receive a message

Work through these in order:

Settings → Communications: is there a pipeline notice or anything under Needs attention?
Is the channel switched on in the Channels section?
Settings → Notification Rules: is the message's Effective column showing suppressed, or is it batched into a digest?
Did the customer turn that category off in their own preferences, or is it within their quiet hours?
For email, is the address suppressed? Suppressed addresses are dropped.

I changed Notification Defaults but existing users still get the old behaviour

That is expected. Defaults apply to users created after you save. Existing users keep their own preferences.

Can I add a completely new kind of notification?

Not on a self-service basis. You can switch messages off, change their channels, timing and wording, and batch them. For a new event type, contact Hammerd support.

Can I send an SMS or WhatsApp message by switching the channel on?

Only if Babylon has made that channel available and configured it for the platform. The Communications page shows whether it has. WhatsApp additionally needs templates approved in your WhatsApp provider.

Custom domains for sender domains
Email marketing and audiences for campaigns and newsletters, which are separate from automated notifications
Team members and roles for the permissions these screens need