iAttendance · Guide
Notifications & Telegram alerts
Get immediate alerts about attendance, leave and approvals, straight to Telegram.
Notification 🧭 Step by step
🔔 Open the inbox
Notification
"Notification" sits at the bottom of the navigation and lists what the system has sent your company, with an unread count on the bell.
The list is ordered by time, newest first.
📬 Read and mark as read
Notification
Click a notification to open the full message. Mark it read afterwards so the bell count comes down.
That way the badge always reflects what still needs your attention.
🤖 Connect Telegram
Beyond the in-app inbox, iAttendance can push immediate alerts through a Telegram bot.
This is the fastest way for a manager to hear about a check-in, a leave request or something awaiting approval without opening the portal at all.
⚙️ Choose which events you want
Configure it so you only receive the event types you care about, rather than everything.
- In a large company, be selective — otherwise routine daily check-ins will flood the Telegram group.
📲 Set up Telegram notifications
User portal › Account › Instant Messaging
Telegram is set up by each person on their own account, not by the company — iAttendance needs the individual Telegram ID, and only the account holder can supply it. Point staff at the user portal: "Account" in the left menu, then open the "Instant Messaging" section.
To get the ID they open https://t.me/iAttendance_bot in Telegram and start the bot; the bot replies with the ID to paste into the "Telegram ID" field. The hint under the field says the same thing, so nobody has to remember the address.
Underneath sit the notification switches, one per source: user and QR, assets, requests, timelog, leaves, and other changes — plus a separate one for promotional e-mail. Tick the ones that matter, press "Save Changes", and that is the whole setup.
- The same panel takes a phone number and a WhatsApp ID. The phone hint asks for the country code without a plus sign, for example 15017122661.
- Each channel has its own "Verify" button below. Pressing one sends a code immediately, so only press it when the person is ready to read the message.
- The switches are independent of each other — somebody can take asset alerts on Telegram and nothing else.
- Changing an ID clears its verified state, and the channel stays unverified until it is verified again. Do not edit these fields to "tidy them up".
- A Telegram ID that is filled in but never verified will not receive anything. If somebody reports silence, check the verification before anything else.
- This is per person. There is no company-wide switch that turns Telegram on for everybody at once, so it belongs in your onboarding checklist for new staff.
🔔 The in-app notification inbox
User portal › Notification
Alongside Telegram, every message also lands in the portal itself. A red badge on the "Notification" menu item shows the unread count, and clicking it opens a single list of everything the account has ever received — asset transfers, request approvals and system messages — newest first.
The grid shows "Title", "Message", "Status" and "Time", with unread rows highlighted and marked "New". Because only the first characters of the message are shown, staff press "Show Message" on the row to read the whole thing in a dialog.
It is a read-only inbox. There is no reply, no compose, no delete and no mark-all-as-read — notifications are a record of what happened, not a messaging system.
- This is the fallback for anyone who has not set up Telegram: they still get everything, they just have to come and look.
- A refresh icon beside the list re-fetches it, which is useful when waiting on an approval.
- A message is marked read the moment the dialog opens, not when it is closed. Dismissing it with Escape does not undo that.
- Opening one message also marks any other notification with the same title and text as read, so a repeated alert can clear several rows at once.
- The badge and the row status are tracked separately. The badge can clear while rows still read "New", and it may come back after a reload even though the person has already looked.
❓ Frequently asked questions
1 What do I get notified about?
Meaningful events: staff check-in and check-out, new leave requests, items awaiting approval and other system events.
2 How is Telegram different from the in-app inbox?
The inbox lives in "Notification" inside the portal. Telegram pushes the alert out to you, so you hear about it without a browser open.
3 Why does the bell still show a count after I read something?
Opening and marking as read are separate actions. Mark it read to update the badge.