An alarm is a message that pops up when someone opens a matching order, and it keeps popping up until someone confirms they've read it. Use alarms for things your team must know before they touch a device, for example:

• "Capital City Coffee Roasters is billed monthly. Don't take payment at the counter." (a customer alarm)
• "This iPhone had its display replaced in September. Check the earlier order before quoting." (a serial number or IMEI alarm)
• "The customer wants the cracked screen back." (an alarm on one order)

Every confirmation is logged in the order timeline, so you can always see who read the alarm and when.

Prefer to watch? This video walks through creating a customer alarm, confirming it on an order, and adding a one-time alarm to a single order.

How alarms work

Every alarm answers three questions.

1. What does it match?

Fill in at least one of these. If you fill in more than one, an order must match all of them. For example, a customer plus a serial number fires only when that customer brings in that device.

Default service location is a label shown in the Alarms list. It doesn't limit which orders the alarm fires on.

2. When does it fire?

3. Does it repeat?

• Recurring (ticked by default): the alarm fires on every matching order. Confirming it silences it on that order only, and the customer's next order gets it again.
• One-time (Recurring unticked): the alarm closes as soon as someone confirms it and never fires again. It also disappears from the Alarms list.

Creating an alarm for a customer or device

1. Click your name in the top-right corner, then click Alarms.
   
2. Click New Alarm.
3. Enter a short Subject (up to 64 characters). It's the headline of the pop-up.
4. Enter the Message your team should read.
5. Choose what the alarm matches:
   • For a customer: click Customer, type at least two letters of the company name, and pick the customer.
     
   • For a device: enter the S/N or the IMEI.
     
6. Optionally, pick a Default service location as a label.
7. Pick a Trigger.
8. Leave Recurring ticked for an alarm that should fire on every matching order, or untick it for a one-time reminder.
9. Click Create. The alarm appears in the Alarms list.
   

What your team sees on the order

When someone opens a matching order, the alarm pops up on top of the order.

• Click Confirm to mark it as read. Fixably shows "Alarm successfully confirmed" and adds an Alarm entry to the order timeline with the subject, the message, who confirmed it and when.
• Closing the pop-up with the × or the Esc key doesn't count as reading it. Nothing is recorded, and the alarm pops up again the next time anyone opens the order.

Anyone who can open the order can confirm an alarm. They don't need any alarm permission.

Creating an alarm for a single order

For a reminder that only matters on one repair, create the alarm from the order itself.

1. Open the order and click the gear button in the top-right corner.
2. Click Create Order Alarm.
   
3. Enter a Subject and a Message. The Order field is filled in for you.
4. Untick Recurring if the alarm only needs to be read once. It then disappears from the Alarms list after it's confirmed.
5. Click Create. You stay on the order.
   

An order alarm always uses the Any user opens the order trigger and never fires on the customer's other orders.

Editing and deleting alarms

The Alarms list shows every open alarm. Closed one-time alarms and deleted alarms aren't listed. The search box finds alarms by serial number, IMEI or customer name, not by subject or message.

1. Click the gear on the alarm's row, then click Edit.
2. Change what you need and click Save, or click Delete to retire the alarm.
   

Deleting an alarm stops it firing and removes it from the list. Its past confirmations stay in the order timelines.

Note: saving a recurring alarm resets its confirmations, so everyone will see it again on orders where it was already confirmed. If you only want to fix a typo, keep that in mind.

Importing alarms from a spreadsheet

To add many alarms at once, for example a list of serial numbers covered by a service agreement, click Import on the Alarms page and upload a CSV or Excel file. You map your file's columns to these fields:

Each row needs at least one of Customer ID, Billing customer ID, Serial number or IMEI number. Fixably shows a preview first: how many alarms will be added, which rows are unchanged, and any rows with errors (by row number). Rows that match an existing open alarm are skipped, so importing the same file twice doesn't create duplicates. An import only adds alarms; it never changes existing ones.

Alarms created automatically

• Macros can create an order alarm as one of their steps, for example during check-in. Contact Fixably support to add a "create alarm" step to a macro.
• Service contracts create and maintain their own alarm for the covered device. Its serial number and IMEI are managed by the contract and can't be edited on the alarm.
• Integrations can create and manage alarms through the Fixably API.

Permissions

If a user's role is locked to their location, their Alarms list shows customer and device alarms, plus order alarms for orders at their own locations. Alarms still pop up for everyone who opens a matching order, wherever it is.

Troubleshooting

• The customer doesn't show up in the Customer field. The field only searches business customers by company name, and only lists customers that have a billing address. Add a billing address to the customer, or use an S/N, IMEI or order alarm instead.
• The Customer field is empty when I edit a customer alarm. Pick the customer again before you click Save. Otherwise Fixably reports that one of Customer, S/N or IMEI must be filled in.
• Two alarms match, but only one popped up. Only one alarm shows at a time. The next one appears after the first is confirmed and the order is opened again.
• The alarm doesn't pop up. Check that the order isn't a draft (alarms never fire on drafts), that the alarm still appears in the Alarms list, and that it hasn't already been confirmed on this order. For a Handler opens the order alarm, the order needs a handler; for Order is closed, the order must be closed.
• "Alarms" in my name menu says I don't have access. Ask your administrator for the View alarms permission.