The Notifications Matrix — A Worked Example
The notifications matrix lets you decide, on every operational email, exactly which audiences should receive it — patient, assigned doctor, clinic admins, wider clinic staff — so your team’s inbox carries the things that matter and stops carrying the things that do not. This guide walks through what an event is, what an audience is, and a real example you can apply on day one.Why we built this
The old Settings → Notifications page was five global toggles. Either reminders were on for everyone or they were off for everyone. Either CC-the-clinic on cancellations was on for everyone or it was off for everyone. Every clinic had at least one staff member drowning in mail and at least one staff member missing the mail they needed. The matrix lets you tune the two independently.What is an event?
An event is one operational thing that just happened in OdontoX and that we might email about. Examples:- Appointment created
- Appointment cancelled
- Appointment rescheduled
- Invoice issued
- Treatment plan accepted
- Low-stock alert
- End-of-day report
- And more — every operational email has its own event row in the matrix.
What is an audience?
An audience is a group of people who could be told about an event. There are four:- Patient — the person the appointment / invoice / plan is about.
- Assigned doctor — the doctor on the appointment, or the doctor who created the treatment plan.
- Clinic admins — every user with the admin role at your clinic.
- Wider clinic staff — every user with the receptionist role at your clinic.
A worked example
“You want patients and the assigned doctor to be notified when an appointment is rescheduled, but you don’t want every receptionist to get the CC.”Here is exactly what to do:
- Open Settings → Notifications.
- Find the row labelled Appointment rescheduled.
- Look at the four boxes in that row:
- Patient — should be ticked. The patient must know the appointment moved.
- Assigned doctor — should be ticked. The doctor needs to see their day change.
- Clinic admins — your call. Leave it off if your admins do not personally book; tick it if they manage the calendar directly.
- Wider clinic staff — untick it. This is the box that was sending every receptionist a CC on every appointment ping.
- The change saves as you tick.
Bulk actions when you want to clear the noise fast
- “Silence this audience” at the top of any column. Untick every event in one click for that audience. Useful when wider staff are drowning in mail and you want a clean slate to opt back in selectively.
- “Reset row to defaults” on any row. Puts that event back to our tuned defaults. Useful when you have ticked things you regret and want to start over on that one event.
Defaults — what is on, what is off
We retuned the defaults to cut inbox noise. On a brand-new clinic:- Patients and assigned doctors get every email that concerns them — appointment reminders, plan acceptances, invoice issuance, etc.
- Clinic admins get the high-signal alerts — low-stock, end-of-day report, treatment plan accepted, suspension notifications, billing emails.
- Wider clinic staff get the high-signal alerts only. CC on every appointment ping is OFF.
Mobile view
On a phone, each event collapses into a card with the same four audience checkboxes. You can tune the matrix from the OdontoX mobile app the same way as on desktop.The audit log
Every change to the matrix is recorded with a before-and-after snapshot. Open Settings → Audit log and search fornotification_preferences.updated to see who changed what and when.
How to use it
- Open Settings → Notifications.
- Read the row labels. Each row is one operational event.
- For each row you care about, tick or untick the audience boxes as you want them.
- Use the column-silence and row-reset buttons when you want to make sweeping changes fast.
- Check the audit log if you ever wonder why a particular email was or was not sent — the matrix snapshot will tell you exactly what was on at the time.