Messaging and Notifications

Prodemy gives you several ways to talk to the people in your club. There are direct messages (one-to-one conversations between adults), group chats (a team chat for each tournament team, and a class chat for each class), and broadcasts (one-to-many announcements from a club owner or coach). Alongside those, the notification system sends the reminders, alerts and digests you receive in the app, by email, by push and by text.

Students can't send or receive direct messages. That's a deliberate safety choice, but they still take part in supervised group chats.

Who can message whom#

This is the most important set of rules on Prodemy, so we'll start here.

Direct messages (1-on-1)#

These pairs can message each other directly:

• A parent and a coach.
• A parent and a club owner.
• A coach and a club owner.

These pairs can't:

• A student and anyone else. Students can't send or receive direct messages.
• Two parents. This isn't a supported pairing.
• Two coaches. This isn't supported by default, although coaches can talk to each other in a team chat during a tournament.

Team chats (group)#

A team chat is created automatically when a tournament team's roster is published. The members are:

• The club owner.
• The team coach, if one is assigned.
• The team manager, who can be a parent or a coach.
• Every player on the team.
• Every player's parent.

Players who are minors can't post by default; their parent posts on their behalf. Everyone else on the team, including players aged 18 or over, parents, coaches, the owner and the manager, can post freely.

Class chats (group)#

If your club turns this on, each class gets its own group chat. The members are:

• The club owner.
• The class's coaches. The owner can also add another active coach from the club to the chat.
• Adult students enrolled in the class.
• Parents of enrolled students who are minors.

Class chats follow the same supervised-group rules as team chats. Students who are minors can read their class chat but can't post in it (their parent posts for them), and adults can post freely.

Why students can't DM#

Private one-to-one messaging between adults and minors is a common route for harassment and grooming. Prodemy removes that risk entirely, and gives students other ways to be heard:

• Students get feedback from coaches through video reviews, where the coach responds using a structured review form.
• Communication between parents and children about practice runs through the verification queue and the team chat, which are group spaces with adults present.
• If a student has something to tell a coach, their parent passes it on.

If a parent has a concern about their child's coach, they can message the coach directly. The chatbot doesn't act as a go-between; it just explains these rules.

Direct messages#

Parents, coaches and club owners all use the same Messages page.

Getting to messages#

Click Messages in your sidebar, or tap the Messages card on your dashboard. The page brings all your conversations together in one place:

• Team chats appear at the top, grouped by tournament.
• Direct message threads appear below them.

Starting a new thread#

Click New message. You'll see a searchable list of the people you're allowed to message, based on the rules above and on the clubs you share with them.

• If you're a parent, you'll see the coaches and club owners of the clubs your children belong to.
• If you're a coach, you'll see the parents of your students and the owners of your clubs.
• If you're a club owner, you'll see every parent and coach in your club.

Pick a contact, type your message and send it.

Reading a thread#

Click a thread to open it. You'll see the other person's name, a badge showing their role, and your message history with timestamps. The unread count clears as soon as you open the thread. You can scroll back as far as you like, because messages are never deleted automatically.

What you can send#

• For now, direct messages are text only.
• You can't attach files to a direct message. If you want to share a video, use the video upload feature instead; that's the dedicated way for students to send videos to coaches.
• Links you type become clickable.

Moderation#

All direct messages are stored on Prodemy's servers, and a platform admin can review them if a dispute is raised. Please be kind.

Realtime delivery and muting#

Chat is realtime: messages appear the moment they're sent, with no need to refresh, and you get a notification for new ones. This applies to direct messages and to both kinds of group chat.

Every conversation, whether it's a direct message, a team chat or a class chat, has a mute option: tap the bell icon in the conversation's header. When you mute a conversation you stay in it and can still read it, but it stops sending you notifications and stops counting toward your unread badge. A muted conversation shows a small "muted" indicator. We also don't send an email for every chat message; instead, chat activity is gathered into a daily message digest (see "Notifications" below), so chat won't flood your inbox.

Team chats#

A tournament team chat is a group conversation that's created automatically when the club owner publishes the roster.

Who's in the channel#

Every team chat includes:

• The owner of the club hosting the tournament.
• The team coach, if one is assigned to this team.
• The team manager, a parent or coach chosen as manager.
• Each player on the team.
• Each player's parent.

Each sender's name has a color-coded role badge beside it, so you can see who's who at a glance.

How it works#

• Messages arrive in realtime, so there's no need to refresh.
• Every message shows the sender's name, their role badge and a timestamp.
• The chat jumps to your first unread message and marks it with a red New messages divider.
• Parents of minors can post, but minors themselves can't. If you're a minor, the send button is disabled, and messages sent on your behalf show your parent's name as the sender.
• If the chat gets busy, mute it with the bell icon in the header.

Parent manager access#

A parent who is assigned as a team manager can use that team's chat even if their own child isn't on the team. They'll find it under Teams I Manage on their Tournaments page.

What happens when the tournament ends#

Team chats stay available indefinitely and are never deleted automatically, so you can scroll back weeks later. Once the tournament date has passed, nobody new joins the chat, because nobody new is registering.

Broadcasts#

Broadcasts are one-to-many announcements sent by club owners or coaches.

Audience targeting#

Club owners can send a broadcast to:

• All club members, at every location.
• A single location (for example, only the Gaithersburg branch).
• A single class (for example, U-13 Intermediate).
• An age group (for example, all U-15 players).
• All coaches.
• All parents.
• A custom group of recipients they pick by hand.

Coaches can send a broadcast to:

• Their assigned classes only.
• Their own students only.

Coaches can't broadcast to the whole club unless the club owner has explicitly given them permission.

Writing a broadcast#

Open Messages from the sidebar, go to the Broadcasts tab and click New broadcast. Club owners can also use the Send Broadcast quick action on their dashboard. A broadcast has these parts:

• Sender: your name and role (club owner or coach).
• Audience: who receives it, chosen from the dropdown.
• Message: the text of your announcement. This is required, and basic formatting is supported.
• Priority: Normal, Important or Urgent. This changes how the broadcast looks to recipients: a blue border for Normal, amber for Important and red for Urgent.
• Expiration: Never, 24 hours, 1 week, or a date you choose. Once it expires, the broadcast is hidden from recipients' dashboards automatically.
• Schedule: send it now, or schedule it for a specific date and time.
• Attachment (optional): one image, video or PDF document. Images can be up to 20 MB, PDFs up to 20 MB, and videos up to 100 MB and 5 minutes long. Attachments appear inside the broadcast in the app and in the email.

Attachments are available on broadcasts only. Direct messages and team and class chats are text-only, and there's no way to attach a file to them.

Delivery channels#

You can choose any combination of these:

• In-app: always on and can't be turned off. The broadcast appears as a pinned card on each recipient's dashboard.
• Email: optional. It's sent to each recipient's email address on file through Prodemy's email service (Resend).
• Push notification: optional. Push works through the installed web app (PWA): if a recipient has installed Prodemy and turned on push on their device, the alert reaches their lock screen and updates the badge on the app icon. See "Web push and home-screen badge" below.
• SMS: optional, and live through Twilio. A recipient only receives a text if their own SMS level allows it and Prodemy's platform policy permits texts for that type of event (admins decide which event types can use SMS). Texts begin with [PRODEMY]. Alerts that are critical for security or payments are texted regardless of a person's preference.

On the recipient side#

Broadcasts appear as pinned cards at the top of the recipient's dashboard, showing:

• The sender's name and role.
• The priority color, as a blue, amber or red left border.
• The message text.
• Any attachment: an embedded video player, an image, or, for a PDF, a preview of its first page. Tapping a PDF opens a built-in reader you can scroll through page by page, with buttons to open it in a new tab or download it.
• A label showing who it was sent to (for example, "Sent to: U-13 Parents").
• A timestamp.
• A Dismiss button, which removes the card from view. The broadcast still appears in your history.

Notifications#

Separate from messaging, notifications are the alerts that tell you about verifications, payments, enrollments, coach feedback and more, across the whole platform.

The notification bell#

The bell sits in the top-right of the navigation bar on every page. A red badge on it shows how many notifications you haven't read.

• The count updates in realtime and stays in step everywhere it appears: on the bell, on the home-screen badge of the installed app, and on your dashboard tiles. You won't be left waiting for an old count to catch up after you've read something.
• Click the bell to see a dropdown of your most recent notifications. Ones you've read fade rather than disappear.
• Mark all as read clears the badge.
• View all opens your full notification history.

What comes through#

Prodemy sends a broad range of notifications. Roughly grouped:

• Drills and training: a drill waiting for verification, a drill verified or rejected, nutrition verified or rejected, a perfect week, a streak milestone, a badge earned, and a change in leaderboard rank.
• Coaches and video: a new video uploaded for review, feedback posted, a session booked, session reminders 24 hours and 1 hour ahead, a session cancelled, and a review posted on your profile.
• Club and tournament: a membership approved or rejected, a tournament registration confirmed, a team published, a broadcast received, a schedule change, and a membership ended.
• Payments: a payment due in 3 days, 1 day or today, reminders while a payment is overdue, an auto-pay notice before a charge, a payment processed, a payment failed, a refund processed, a subscription renewed, and a warning 3 days before access is automatically locked.
• Community: your post was flagged or hidden, your post was restored, your post was removed, and a new comment on your post.
• Account: account deletion started or cancelled, a club or drill approved or rejected, account suspended, the welcome email, changes to two-factor sign-in, a request to re-accept the terms, and a monthly report being ready.
• Messaging: a new direct message and a new group-chat message. These come in the app and by push, and are collected into a daily email digest rather than sent as one email per message.
• Equipment: a loan due soon, a loan overdue, and a deposit released, if your club uses equipment tracking.
• Linking parents and children: a link request received, approved or rejected.

There are well over 100 kinds of notification today, and the list grows as we add features.

Notification preferences#

Open Settings, then Notifications.

• In-app notifications are always on and can't be turned off.
• Email is on by default for transactional messages, and you can change it for each category. Emails for individual chat messages are turned off by design; chat goes into the daily digest instead.
• Push is on by default, and you can change it for each category. Push reaches you through the installed web app (PWA) once you've turned it on for that device, which is the supported way to get notifications on a phone.
• SMS is controlled by a single SMS level that applies everywhere (see below), rather than by a setting for each category.

You can change your preferences at any time, and the change applies straight away to new notifications.

Your SMS level#

Text messaging is live, and you choose how many texts you get with one SMS level in your settings. Roughly:

• Off: no texts, apart from the mandatory ones described below.
• Critical only: only alerts that are critical for security or payments.
• Critical + important: the above, plus a selected set of important events.
• All: everything that can be sent by text.

Two things sit on top of your choice. First, Prodemy's platform policy decides which kinds of event can be texted at all, and admins manage that. Second, a small set of security- and payment-critical alerts are texted to you regardless of your level, because they're mandatory. Texts begin with [PRODEMY]. We also have a safeguard that never sends a text to a child's number.

Club-scoped notifications#

When a notification relates to a particular club (for example, a new verification request from a club your child belongs to), the club's name is added to the title automatically, and the notification links straight to that club. Click it and you land on the right club's view; your dashboard switches to that club for you.

For example:

• Without the club link: "Arjun completed today's batting drill — verify now"
• With it: "Arjun completed today's batting drill at Mike Cricket Academy — verify now". The link takes you straight to the Mike Cricket Academy view of the verification queue.

Rate limiting#

To keep notifications from becoming overwhelming, non-urgent ones are batched together: for example, three drill completions in quick succession become one combined notification. Urgent items, such as a failed payment or a session starting in an hour, are never batched and always come through immediately.

In the app, each person receives at most 5 notifications in any 60-second window. Certain types are exempt from this limit, such as admin escalations and confirmations that an action was reverted.

Email#

Prodemy sends email from two addresses, depending on the kind of message:

• hello@prodemy.app sends messages written by people, such as replies to the contact form and support tickets. Replies to these reach our support team's inbox.
• noreply@prodemy.app sends automated notifications, such as verifications, receipts and enrollment confirmations. Please don't reply to these, as your reply won't reach a person.

Types of email you might get from Prodemy#

• A welcome email when you sign up, written for your role (parent, student, coach or club owner).
• An email verification link after you sign up.
• Confirmations for enrollments, payments and refunds.
• A drill waiting for your verification (for parents).
• Coach feedback posted (for students and their parents).
• Your membership approved or rejected.
• Broadcasts, with any attachment included.
• A fee change notice showing the old fee, the new fee and the date it takes effect.
• A schedule change notice.
• A notice that a class is ending, with its end date and reason. No refund or credit is issued; questions about payment go to the club.
• A notice that a tournament or workshop has been cancelled, with refund details.
• A notice that a member has been removed. The wording differs for a scheduled removal, an immediate removal and a ban.
• Payment reminders: a "due in 3 days" email, then due-today and overdue reminders while a bill stays unpaid. See Payments & Billing.
• An auto-pay preview 3 days before a charge.
• A receipt for every successful payment.

If you don't get an email#

• Check your spam folder.
• Make sure the email address on your Prodemy account is correct.
• For a verification email, click Resend on the verification screen.
• If several emails are missing, raise a ticket and we can check the delivery records.

Web push and home-screen badge#

If you install Prodemy as an app (the PWA; see Getting Started), web push notifications are live. After installing, turn on push for that device with a one-time Enable on this device tap. You'll then get alerts on your lock screen, plus an unread-count badge on the app icon that stays in step with the bell in the app. On an iPhone, push only works once Prodemy is installed and opened from its home-screen icon.

Push on a phone#

On a phone, Prodemy is an installable web app (PWA); there's no listing in the App Store or Google Play. Add it to your home screen and turn on push there, which is the supported way to get notifications on a phone. See Install Prodemy on your phone.

SMS — live#

Text messaging is live through Twilio. Whether you receive a particular text depends on your SMS level (see "Your SMS level" above) and on Prodemy's policy for that type of event, and mandatory security and payment alerts are always sent. Texts begin with [PRODEMY]. For club owners, sending broadcasts by text is also live and follows the same rules about each recipient's level and the platform policy.

Deep links#

Every notification and broadcast links straight to the right place in the app.

• A payment reminder opens that specific pending payment.
• A verification request opens the verification queue for the right child.
• A broadcast notification opens the broadcast card, with the right club already selected.
• A team chat notification opens the team chat.

These links open in your browser, or in the installed app if you've added Prodemy to your home screen.

Common situations#

I'm not getting drill verification reminders#

Open Settings, then Notifications. Email and in-app notifications are probably on, but if you've turned email off for this category, the reminders will only appear in the app.

It's also worth checking your spam folder for any notifications that come by email.

Broadcasts aren't reaching everyone I targeted#

Who receives a broadcast depends on:

• The audience you chose (location, class, age group and so on).
• Whether each person's membership is active. Members whose membership has ended don't receive it.
• Each person's notification preferences. If someone has turned off email for broadcasts, they'll only see it in the app.

To see who received it and through which channels, open the broadcast from your Broadcasts list and choose Delivery stats.

I got a duplicate notification#

This is rare, but it can happen if the same event is triggered twice (for example, when a step is retried). If it keeps happening, raise a ticket with the notification's title and the times you received it, and we'll look into it.

A chat isn't updating#

Chats update in realtime. If you're not seeing new messages that other people say they've sent, first check that the conversation isn't muted (the bell icon in its header). Then refresh the page, or close and reopen the app, to reconnect.

If this doesn't help#

Raise a ticket through Contact us. Tell us what you were trying to send or receive, and include the times if you can. We read every ticket and reply by email.