How to Set Up Alerts and Notifications

Alerts not arriving at all? If several alerts stopped at once, check Hapn System Status for an active incident before adjusting your settings.

Alerts and notifications keep you informed about your tracker's location and activities in real time. This guide will help you create, edit, and manage your alerts.

Contents

• Understanding Alert Types
• Setting Up Alerts
• Creating a New Alert
• Editing or Deleting Alerts
• Managing Notifications (Mobile App)
• Frequently Asked Questions

Note: Alert configuration is done through the web app. You can access it directly from the mobile app by going to Menu > Issues and Alerts > Alerts > Gear icon, which will open the web version.

Understanding Alert Types

Hapn has 50 alert types across eight categories. The lists below cover them all — use the search box at the top of the alert type step if you already know what you're after.

Location and Movement Alerts

• Movement: Triggers if a tracker moves. A stationary vehicle can drift a few metres on GPS alone, which is enough to fire this — if that happens, set a Trigger delay so the movement has to persist before you're told. See How the Trigger step works.
• No Workday Activity: Triggers when a vehicle or asset has not moved during the first part of its workday. Good for spotting a machine nobody started.
• Stop Exceeds Duration: Triggers when a tracker has been stopped for longer than a duration you set in minutes.
• Place Entry/Exit: Triggers when a tracker enters or exits one of your saved places.
• Trip Exceeds Distance/Duration: Triggers when a trip exceeds the distance or duration you set.
• Trip Started / Trip Finished: Triggers when a trip begins or ends. Neither is instant — Hapn waits to confirm a real trip rather than a moment of movement. If you need to know the second something moves, use Movement or a place alert instead.

Tracker Status Alerts

• Active Hours: Triggers each time a tracker reaches a set number of active hours — the basis for hour-based servicing.
• Awaiting Pairing Connection: Triggers when the tracker is waiting for a pairing connection.
• Charging Started/Stopped: Triggers when your tracker begins or ends charging.
• Connected/Disconnected from Power Source: Triggers when the tracker connects to or disconnects from a power source.
• Hapn Mesh In/Out of Range: Triggers when the tracker enters or exits the mesh safe zone.
• High External Voltage / Low External Voltage: Two separate alert types. Each takes a threshold in Volts — one fires when the external supply goes above it, the other when it drops below.
• Low Battery: Triggers when the tracker battery falls below the percentage you set.
• Low External Battery: Triggers when the connected external battery falls below the percentage you set. Only available for trackers with external battery readings enabled.
• Online/Offline: Triggers when your tracker comes online or loses connection.
• Pairing Connection Established/Lost/Awaiting: Triggers based on connection status between primary and secondary trackers.
• Power On / Power Off: Triggers when the tracker itself is powered on or off.

Driver Safety Alerts

• Crash: Triggers when a crash is detected by your tracker. Available on vehicle trackers with crash detection; it is the alert to route to a phone rather than email, since it is the one you need to act on within minutes.
• Harsh Acceleration / Harsh Braking / Harsh Turning: Three separate alert types. Each fires on an event the tracker detects — there is no sensitivity threshold to set in the alert rule, only a Trigger delay.
• Speeding: Triggers on speed. It works two ways — a fixed speed you choose, or a margin over the posted speed limit of the road the vehicle is on. See Speeding alerts: fixed speed or over the posted limit below.

Asset Status & Health Alerts

• Check Engine Light: Triggers when the Check Engine Light is on.
• DTC Fault Code: Triggers when any DTC code is reported.
• Engine RPM/Temperature/Work Time: Triggers when the value exceeds the threshold you set.
• Fuel Level / Oil Level: Triggers when the level falls below the threshold you set.
• Ignition On/Off: Triggers when the vehicle engine turns on or off. Applies to OBD and hard-wired trackers only.

Security and Sensor Alerts

• Light Sensor Exposure Started/Ended: Triggers when the front light sensor detects a change in light. GL500 series only.
• SOS: Triggers when the SOS button on your tracker is pressed.
• Tamper Sensor Exposure to Light/Ended: Triggers when the GL500 series rear light sensor is exposed to or removed from light.

Smart Sensor Alerts

• Smart Sensor: Triggers when Smart Sensor readings match the rule you set.

Task Deadline Alerts

• Task Approaching Past Due / Task Past Due: Triggers when a maintenance work order is approaching or has passed its due date. (These alert types still use the earlier “task” wording.) See How to Create a Work Order or Maintenance Schedule.

Telematics Alerts

• Idling: Triggers when a vehicle or asset is running but not in motion.

Setting Up Alerts

Accessing Alerts

• Web: Log in at app.gethapn.com, select "Alert Rules" from the left-hand menu.
• Mobile app: Go to Menu > Issues and Alerts > Alerts > Gear icon to open alert configuration in the web app

Creating a New Alert

From the Alert Configuration page, click "Create an Alert" in the top right corner. You will be guided through 7 steps:

1. Alert Type: Search or browse the list and select the alert type you want to create
2. Name and Description: Enter a name and description. A default is pre-filled based on the alert type selected
3. Alert Dependencies: Optionally enable a Trigger Delay to set how long the condition must persist before a notification is sent
4. Assets: Choose to monitor All Assets or select specific assets from the list
5. Locations: Choose All Locations or select specific locations, also known as Places, where the alert should be active

6. Schedule: Set when the alert should be active — Always Active, Business Hours, After Hours, or a Custom Schedule

   

7. Notifications: Select recipients (Me, All Users, All Admins, All Collaborators, or specific users) and choose their notification channels (Mobile, Web, Text, or Email). You can also add recipients by phone number or email. Click Save to activate your alert

   

Editing or Deleting Alerts

1. From the Alert Configuration page, locate the alert you want to manage
2. Click the three dots (⋮) to the right of the alert name
3. Select Edit, Duplicate, or Delete
4. If editing, make your changes and click "Save"

How the Trigger step works

Step 3 of every alert rule is Trigger, and it does more than most people realise. Two things live there.

1. Trigger delay — on every single alert type

Every alert in Hapn has a Trigger delay: "How long the condition has to hold before the alert fires." Nothing is exempt.

This is the single most useful control for a noisy alert, and it's the answer to most "why did this fire when nothing happened?" questions. A parked vehicle drifts on GPS; a voltage reading dips for a moment as an engine cranks; a van pauses at a light. Requiring the condition to hold for a few seconds — or a few minutes — removes almost all of that without switching the alert off.

If an alert is firing too often, reach for the trigger delay before you disable the rule.

2. A threshold, on the alerts that take one

Roughly half the alert types add a threshold above the delay. The unit is fixed per alert type — you don't choose it, apart from on Speeding:

Engine temperature is in °C regardless of the units you've chosen elsewhere — worth knowing before you type 200 expecting Fahrenheit.

The rest — Movement, Crash, the harsh-driving alerts, Place Entry and Exit, Power On/Off, Online/Offline, Charging, SOS and the sensor alerts — are event alerts. There's no threshold to set, only the trigger delay.

Speeding alerts: fixed speed, or over the posted limit

This is the most misunderstood alert in Hapn, so it's worth being precise: a speeding alert can trigger relative to the posted speed limit, not just at a fixed number. You choose which on step 3 of the alert rule.

Open Alerts & Issues → Alert Rules → Create alert rule, choose Speeding, then go to 3 — Trigger. The first dropdown offers:

• Speed exceeds — a fixed speed. "Alert me if this vehicle goes over 75 mph", regardless of where it is.
• Speed limit exceeded by — a margin over the posted limit of whatever road the vehicle is on. This is the one people are usually looking for.

Next to it you set the amount, and a unit of either mph or %:

• Speed limit exceeded by 10 mph — fires at 45 in a 35, and at 80 in a 70. A flat margin everywhere.
• Speed limit exceeded by 20 % — fires at 42 in a 35, and at 84 in a 70. The margin scales with the road, so it's stricter in town and more forgiving on the motorway.

Percentage is usually the fairer choice for a mixed fleet: 10 mph over is dangerous in a 25 zone and unremarkable on an interstate.

Stop it firing on GPS blips

Below the threshold is a for control — a number and a unit of Seconds, Minutes or Hours. The condition has to hold for that long before the alert fires.

Leave it at a second or two and a single bad GPS reading can trigger an alert. Set it to 10–15 seconds and you'll only hear about sustained speeding, which is what you actually care about. There's also a separate Trigger delay toggle governing how long the condition must hold before firing.

Which vehicles this works on

Posted speed limits come from map data matched to the vehicle's position, so the vehicle has to be on a mapped road with a known limit. It won't apply on private ground, a yard or a job site.

Alert or report?

The alert tells you as it happens. The Speeding Report shows you what already happened, graded Low (1–5 mph over), Medium (6–10) and Severe (11+), with a link straight into the history at the moment of each event. Most fleets want both: the alert for the egregious stuff, the report for the weekly pattern.

Managing Notifications (Mobile App)

While full alert configuration opens the web app, you can temporarily silence mobile notifications using Do Not Disturb mode.

Using Do Not Disturb Mode

1. Open the Hapn app and tap the menu icon in the bottom right corner
2. Under "Preferences," tap "Notifications"
3. Toggle "Do Not Disturb" on or off and tap "Save Changes"

When Do Not Disturb is enabled, you won't receive notifications on your mobile device, but alerts will still be recorded in your account history. Email and SMS notifications will continue as normal.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take for a new alert to become active? New alerts become active immediately after saving.

Is there a limit to how many alerts I can create? No, you can create as many alerts as needed.

Can I set up alerts to notify multiple people? Yes, you can add multiple recipients across different notification channels when creating an alert.

Related Articles

• Using the Alerts Report
• Creating & Managing Boundaries
• How do I manage users on my account?

Need more help? Contact our support team at support@gethapn.com or submit a ticket. You can also reach us any time via 24/7 live chat.

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• Using Spotlight: A Temporary Geofence for One Asset
• Using Scout: Hapn's AI Assistant
• Setting Your Organization's Business Hours
• Getting Too Many Alert Emails? How to Reduce or Stop Them