Overview
Beyond sending an alert immediately, Airtame Cloud lets you schedule an alert for a future time or set it to repeat on a pattern. This article covers how these alerts behave — what takes priority, what the limits are, and what to expect when things overlap. For the steps themselves, see How to start an emergency alert from Airtame Cloud?
Requirements
- An active Airtame Cloud organization with owner, administrator, device manager or content manager role
- Airtame Hybrid or Airtame Core licensed devices
- Devices are up-to-date. Devices on an older version will not display scheduled or repeating alerts; Airtame Cloud shows a warning when any selected device group contains such a device.
Which alert wins
- More than one alert can be active for the same device group.
- Airtame resolves this with one rule: a scheduled or repeating alert never overrides a manual alert that is already running. Everything else defers to the newest alert.
| Already on screen | New alert arriving | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled alert | Scheduled alert | New alert takes over |
| Manual alert | Scheduled alert | Manual alert stays |
| Scheduled alert | Manual alert | New alert takes over |
| Manual alert | Manual alert | New alert takes over |
The reasoning: a manual alert means someone is responding to something happening right now. A planned drill should never push that off screen.
Timezones
Every scheduled and repeating alert carries one timezone, chosen when you create it. All affected devices display the alert at that same moment — the timezone is a property of the alert, not of the device.
e.g. If your organization spans several timezones, a drill scheduled for 10:00 Central will reach your Eastern devices at 11:00 local time. Plan around this, or create separate alerts per region.
Editing a scheduled or repeating alert
You can edit a scheduled alert, or a repeating series, up until it runs.
For repeating alerts, edits apply to the entire series. There is no option to change a single occurrence, or to change this occurrence and all following ones. If you need a one-off variation, cancel the series and create the alerts you need separately.
Stopping versus cancelling
These are two different actions and they are easy to confuse:
- Stop applies to an alert that is on screen right now. For a repeating alert, this ends the current occurrence only — the series carries on.
- Cancel applies to an alert that has not run yet. For a repeating alert, this removes every future occurrence.
To end a repeating series that is currently showing, do both: stop the occurrence on screen, then cancel the series.
Limits
- Your organization can hold 256 scheduled and repeating alerts at one time.
- Immediate alerts do not count towards this limit.
- A scheduled or repeating alert counts as one against the limit, not one per occurrence.
If you hit the limit, Airtame Cloud blocks new scheduled and repeating alerts until you cancel some. Immediate alerts are never blocked, so a real emergency can always be broadcast.
If your organization genuinely needs more than 256, contact Airtame support and tell us — it helps us judge whether the limit should change.
Known behaviours
- Android wake-up. When a scheduled alert ends and reveals an older alert still active underneath, Airtame apps on Android devices are not woken to display it. The revealed alert appears the next time the device wakes. This does not affect alerts starting — those always wake the device.
- Sleeping screens. As with immediate alerts, screens with CEC functionality wake when a scheduled alert starts. Airtame Hubs, Airtame 2, and Virtual Airtame hardware do not wake if switched off.
- Group membership changes. A device added to a targeted group before a scheduled alert runs will receive it. A device removed before it runs will not.