SOURCE:    Vacation Tracker
TITLE:     How Do I Set Notifications Within Vacation Tracker?
URL:       https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/how-do-i-set-notifications-within-vacation-tracker/
LANG:      en
PUBLISHED: 2021-12-06
UPDATED:   2026-01-27
READING:   2 min
SUMMARY:   Do you need a more efficient way to let your users know who's away? Our Notifications page gives you customization options to let your users and management know about upcoming, scheduled leaves!

How Do I Set Notifications Within Vacation Tracker?

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Last updated on January 27, 2026

How Do I Set Notifications Within Vacation Tracker?

Notifications keep your team in the loop on who's away — without anyone needing to check a calendar or ask. Pick a Slack channel, Microsoft Teams channel, or a list of email addresses, set a daily or weekly schedule, and Vacation Tracker handles the rest. The whole thing is configured under Team Notifications, lives at the workspace level, and takes about a minute to set up.

Who Can Set Notifications

Both Admins and Approvers can create Team Notifications. Each notification is owned by whoever created it, and the rules for editing or deleting are role-based:

  • Admins can edit or delete any notification, regardless of who created it.
  • Approvers can edit or delete notifications they personally created, but not notifications created by an Admin or by another Approver.

Create a Notification

  1. Sign in at app.vacationtracker.io.
  2. In the left-hand menu, under Team & Approval Flows, click Team Notifications.
  3. Click New Notification at the top of the page. A dropdown opens with the available notification types — pick Daily/Weekly Notifications.
  4. Fill out the form (covered field-by-field below).
  5. Click Create Notification at the bottom to save. Cancel exits without saving; Reset clears the form back to defaults.
New Notification form on the Team Notifications page, showing all fields from Name through If No Upcoming Leaves with the Create Notification button at the bottom

Field-by-Field

Notification Name

A label for your reference only. Visible on the Team Notifications page so you can tell similar notifications apart — your team won't see it in the actual delivered notification. Examples: "Daily team standup", "Sales weekly digest", "HR Friday roundup".

Filter By

Picks the slice of users the notification covers. The first dropdown chooses the filter type, the second lets you pick one or more values within that type. You can mix and match by adding multiple filter rows.

  • Department — limit to one or more Departments.
  • Location — limit to one or more Locations.
  • Labels — filter by user Labels (Manager, Full-Time, Leadership, etc.). Complete plan only.

Frequency

How often the notification is sent.

Daily

Reveals a Send on row with checkboxes for each day of the week. Tick the days you want a notification on (Monday–Friday is selected by default). The notification fires once per ticked day at the time you set.

Weekly

Sends once a week. You'll get options to pick the day the week starts on, which day of the week the notification is sent on, and whether the leave information should cover the Current Week or Next Week. Pick Next Week if you'd rather see what's coming up — useful for planning.

Time and Time Zone

The clock-time at which the notification is sent and the time zone that applies. The default is 10:00 AM. Leave time zones unset and the notification will use your workspace default; otherwise pick a specific zone if you want it to fire on a specific local time for the recipients.

Send Via

Where the notification is delivered. Options depend on the integration your workspace uses:

  • Slack or Microsoft Teams integration — pick a Channel (the system surfaces the channels available on your workspace) or one or more Email addresses, or use both.
  • Google Workspace or Email integration — only the email option is available; you can list multiple addresses separated by commas.

Language

The language the delivered notification is rendered in. Defaults to English. Useful if your team uses Vacation Tracker in a different primary language.

Group Leaves By

Controls how the leaves are grouped inside the notification body.

  • Department — leaves are grouped under each Department heading.
  • Location — leaves are grouped under each Location heading.
  • If neither is selected (or you choose not to group), leaves are listed alphabetically by user name.

If No Upcoming Leaves

Tells Vacation Tracker what to do on a quiet day. Two options:

  • Yes, send the notification — the message goes out anyway, listing nobody on leave. Useful if your team relies on the daily ping as a heartbeat.
  • No, don't send the notification — no message is sent on days with nothing to report. Cuts inbox noise.
Live preview at the bottom
The form shows a plain-English summary of your settings near the bottom — e.g. "The Notification will be sent out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at 10:00 o'clock. It will include leave information of 168 Users (View Users)." Use it to sanity-check before you save.

After You Save

The new notification appears on the Team Notifications page with columns for Active, Name, Owner, Notification Type (Daily Notification or Weekly Notification), and Send at. Each row has actions:

  • The Active toggle pauses or resumes the notification without deleting it.
  • The send (paper-plane) icon is the Send Now action — it dispatches the notification immediately so you can preview the result. Handy when you've just changed the format and want to see it land.
  • The delete (trash) icon removes the notification.

Other Notification Types

The New Notification dropdown also surfaces a couple of additional notification types:

Birthday Notifications

Sends a celebratory notification on each user's birthday. Setup follows a similar form (filters, time, send-via channel) — pick this option from the New Notification dropdown to configure it.

Anniversary Notifications (Coming soon)

Marked as Coming soon in the dropdown. Will recognize work anniversaries the same way Birthday Notifications recognize birthdays. Watch the changelog for the launch.

Plan Differences

Plan gating
On the Core plan, notifications can be filtered by Departments and Locations only. On the Complete plan, you also get filtering by Labels — useful for slicing notifications by role (Manager, Leadership, Full-Time, etc.) rather than by team. See Guide: What Are The Differences Between Our Core & Complete Plans?

Common Questions

No. Only Admins and Approvers can create notifications. The Team Notifications page sits in the Admin/Approver-only Team & Approval Flows section of the menu.

Leave reminders are automated nudges sent to Approvers about pending leave requests they haven't acted on yet (the system runs them on a fixed schedule and they can't be disabled). Team Notifications are scheduled digests about approved leaves, sent to whichever channel or inbox you choose. Different audience, different content, different control level.

Yes. Each notification is independent, so you can run a daily one for the Sales channel, a weekly one for the leadership team, and a separate one for HR — all at once. Each shows up as its own row on the Team Notifications page with its own toggle, owner, and settings.

What's Next?

How Do I Disable / Delete Notifications?
Need help?
Contact our Support team via email or chat, Monday to Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM EST.

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