App onboarding
App onboarding invites keyholders who are not yet on the app to install your control room's white-label app and claim their own keyholder row. Accepting turns that row into an app user: they get push notifications instead of SMS, and can arm, disarm and raise a panic. Their call order, response passwords and medical alerts stay exactly as they are.
It exists for takeovers. When you take over monitoring for an alarm company, the import brings across sites, keyholders, zone descriptions and contact numbers — but not app users. Those keyholders are reachable only by WhatsApp and SMS until they install the app, which is slower for them and more expensive for you.
Invitations are sent from each site's People tab — the Onboard button on a non-app keyholder, or Onboard all for the whole site (see Site details → People). This page holds the workspace-level pieces: whether your app is publishable at all, and the default for the future automatic nudge.
Onboard on the People tab is a deliberate staff action and works whenever a published app exists, regardless of this switch. The Invite keyholders to install the app switch is the default for automatic nudging (not yet sending) and feeds the Would be invited count below.
Two things have to be true
The page shows them separately, because they have completely different fixes.
1. Is there an app to send people to?
This is the coloured panel at the top of the card, and you cannot change it from this page. It reads your company's white-label app and reports one of:
- <Your app name> — published on Android and iPhone — everything is in order.
- <Your app name> — published on Android only (or iPhone only) — the app exists on one platform. Keyholders on the other platform cannot be onboarded and will not be contacted.
- No app available yet — with the reason underneath:
- There is no branded app for this company yet. Customers are never pointed at the generic CleverAlert app, because that would put another company's brand in front of your customers. Onboarding stays unavailable until your own app is built.
- …has been built but is not published to a store yet. Publish it, then have someone confirm the listing so it can be marked verified.
- …was rejected by the store. It has to be fixed and resubmitted.
- …is marked live, but no store listing has been verified. Someone needs to confirm the app is genuinely installable before customers are sent a link.
A store link is only ever used once a person has confirmed that listing actually works. This is deliberate: an invitation that leads to a dead store page is worse than no invitation.
This check is a hard gate, not a warning. With no published app, the Onboard button on a site's People tab explains the block and nothing is sent and no link is made.
2. Do you want your customers on the app?
That is the Invite keyholders to install the app switch, and it is off by default.
Off by default is a real choice, not caution. Some monitoring companies sell the app as a paid add-on or a premium tier, and inviting every keyholder for free would undercut that. Others want their whole book moved across as fast as possible. Neither is assumed.
If you turn the switch on while the app is not yet published, the page tells you plainly that nothing will be sent until it is.
Keyholders
Underneath, the card counts the keyholders across every site linked to this workspace:
| Row | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Already on the app | Connected app users. Nothing to do for them. |
| Not on the app yet | Reachable only by WhatsApp or SMS today. |
| Would be invited | How many people the current settings actually cover. |
| Set to always invite | Only shown when at least one person has that override. |
| Set to never invite | Only shown when at least one person has that override. |
Would be invited is the number that matters. If it is 0 while people are sitting in Not on the app yet, then either the app is not published, the switch is off, or those people are individually set to never.
Per-keyholder overrides
The workspace switch is the default. Individual people can be overridden on each site: open the site, go to the People tab, click Edit on the person, and set App onboarding:
- Use workspace default — the normal case. Follows the switch on this page.
- Always invite to the app — invite this person even when the workspace default is off. Useful for one customer who has asked for the app while the rest of the book stays as-is.
- Never invite to the app — never invite this person.
Choosing Never invite to the app reveals a Why not box. It is optional, but worth filling in: "no smartphone" and "asked us not to" mean very different things if the decision is ever revisited.
Overrides beat the workspace default, but neither override can beat the app itself. If no published app exists, Always invite still invites nobody — there is nowhere to send them.
The setting only appears for people who are not already connected to the app. There is nothing to invite an existing app user to.
A keyholder who declines an invitation in the app is set to Never invite automatically, with the reason they gave (e.g. "Declined in the app: no smartphone") — so nobody keeps nudging them. Pressing Onboard on them again is still possible; it is treated as a deliberate re-invite.
Where to start
- Check the panel at the top says your app is published. If it does not, that is a build-and-publish task, not a settings task.
- Look at Not on the app yet to see the size of the opportunity.
- Set any known exceptions to Never invite to the app on their site's People tab, with a reason.
- Turn the switch on when you are ready.
- Invite from each site's People tab — one person at a time with Onboard, or the whole site with Onboard all.