Notifications

Who this guide is for: Owners and Admins who want to know which notifications EmbayLMS sends, and the people who adjust them: the Owner sets the sender identity, and anyone who can manage templates can reword the emails.

Overview

EmbayLMS sends notifications automatically. There is no list of notification types to switch on or off: each type is sent when its event happens. What you can change is:

Every email is available in English and French (Canada). Each person receives it in their own language, or in the organization’s default language when they have not chosen one.

Prerequisites

• The Owner role for the sender identity and the overdue escalation
• Template management (Owner or Admin by default) to reword emails
• Due dates on enrollments, if you rely on due-date and overdue notices (due dates are set per enrollment, when you enroll or assign)

1 - What EmbayLMS sends

Most types send an email and an in-app notification (the bell in the header). A few are in-app only by default: they send an email only if you enable a custom email for them under Templates → Email (section 3).

Account emails (invitation, password reset, email verification) are always sent and cannot be turned off.

How learners unsubscribe (LMS-723)

Marketing-style email carries a one-click unsubscribe, as required by Gmail and Yahoo bulk-sender rules and by Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL). Transactional email about someone’s account or training does not carry one — an unsubscribe link you cannot honour is misleading, so we do not show one.

There are two ways a recipient can act on it, and they behave differently:

The confirmation step is deliberate. Corporate mail-security products — Microsoft Defender Safe Links, Proofpoint URL Defense and similar scanners — open every link in an incoming message to check it before the recipient ever sees it. If merely opening the link applied the opt-out, those scanners would silently unsubscribe your people from mail they never chose to leave. Requiring the button press means an automated scan changes nothing.

The confirmation page is shown in the language the email was written in.

An unsubscribe only switches off the one notification type the email was about. It never turns off everything. Recipients can review and change every preference under My Profile → Notification preferences, and administrators can see the resulting state on the user’s profile.

2 - Configuring the Email Sender Identity

By default, notifications are sent as Embay Consulting Inc. <noreply@embaylms.com>. You can put your own organization’s name in front of that address, and choose where replies land.

2.1 Set your sender name and reply-to address

1. Navigate to Settings → Notifications.
2. Enter a Sender name - for example, “Acme Learning Team”. This is what appears in your learners’ inbox. Leave it blank to use the platform default.
3. Enter a Reply-to address - for example, learning@acme.com. This is where a learner’s reply is delivered. Leave it blank and replies go to an unmonitored address.
4. The Recipients will see box previews the exact From line before you commit to it.
5. Click Save.

Changes apply to mail sent from that point on, within about a minute.

2.2 Why you cannot change the sending address

The address itself - the part after the < - stays on a domain EmbayLMS has verified. That verification is what makes your mail pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC at the receiving mail server.

If you could type in learning@acme.com as the sending address, every message would be sent from a domain that has not authorized EmbayLMS to send on its behalf. Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo would see an unauthenticated message claiming to be from Acme, and would put it in spam or reject it outright. The setting would appear to work and quietly destroy your deliverability.

So the split is deliberate:

The reply-to address gives you the outcome most organizations actually want: the learner replies and reaches your team, at your address.

Sending from your own domain requires DNS records on your side and verification on ours. That is a separate capability - contact us if you need it.

Configuration reference

Both fields are audit-logged. Clearing a field and saving returns it to the default.

3 - Rewording an email

Every type listed under Templates → Email has a built-in EmbayLMS text (session announcements are not listed: their email carries the sender’s own subject and message). You can replace it with your own subject and body, separately in English and in French.

1. Open Templates in the sidebar, then the Email tab.
2. Pick the notification type from the list. A custom badge marks the types you have already changed.
3. Choose the language tab: English or Français (CA). If you have not changed this language yet, the built-in text is pre-filled so you can start from it.
4. Edit the Subject and the HTML body. Basic HTML is supported.
5. Use + Add variable to insert a value such as {{recipientFirstName}} or {{courseName}}. Each type offers only the variables it can fill; the list shows a sample for each one. Values are inserted safely (HTML-escaped).
6. Check the Preview at the bottom. It renders the email with sample values; its links are inactive.
7. Click Save override.

To go back to the built-in text, click Reset to default. To keep your text but stop using it for now, untick the box that starts with Use this override and save.

For the in-app-only types (quiz passed, due soon, overdue), saving an enabled override is what turns their email on.

4 - Due-date reminders

Due dates belong to an enrollment, not to a course: two people in the same course can have different due dates. You set one when you enroll or assign someone.

For every enrollment with a due date that is not yet completed:

• a Due soon notice is sent a few days before the due date (3 days on the standard platform setting);
• an Overdue notice is sent once, after the due date passes.

Each is sent at most once per enrollment. Both are in-app only unless you enable a custom email for them (section 3). The timing is a platform setting and cannot be changed per organization.

5 - Overdue Escalation to Managers (LMS-728)

When a learner misses a course deadline, their manager can be notified automatically.

Off by default. Enabling this starts sending email to managers, so no escalation is sent until an Owner turns it on.

5.1 Turn it on

1. Navigate to Settings → General → Manager overdue escalation. (Owner permission required.)
2. Tick Send overdue escalations to managers.
3. Set the grace period — days to wait after the due date before escalating. Default 1. A short grace avoids escalating someone who is a few hours late and about to finish.
4. Set repeat every — how often a manager is reminded about the same overdue assignment while it stays overdue. Default 7 days.
5. Click Save.

5.2 One digest, not one email per assignment

Each manager receives a single email listing every overdue assignment across their direct reports, sorted worst-first — not one email per assignment. A manager with eight people behind on annual compliance gets one email with eight rows. The email shows the team member, the course, and how many days overdue it is, with a link to their team report.

Emails longer than 15 rows show the first 15 and summarise the rest (“…and 10 more”); the full list is on the team report.

5.3 How the cadence works

• A nightly sweep collects everything overdue by more than the grace period.
• Every assignment included in a digest is stamped, and will not appear in another digest until repeat every days have passed.
• A newly-overdue assignment joins the next nightly digest rather than triggering an email of its own.

So a manager hears about a given overdue course at most once per repeat window, and receives at most one escalation email per day regardless of team size.

Requirements:

• The learner must have a Manager set on their user profile (see User Management guide, section 7).
• The manager must have an active EmbayLMS account. If the manager is deactivated, nothing is sent and nothing is marked as escalated — the digest resumes once a new manager is assigned.
• Managers can opt out individually under My Profile → Notification preferences → Team overdue training (managers).

6 - Instructor-led and virtual sessions

Session notifications are automatic. There is nothing to configure per session:

• Registration confirmed, when a learner registers or is registered.
• A reminder about a day before the session starts (24 hours on the standard platform setting).
• Rescheduled, when the time or place changes, and Cancelled, when the session is cancelled.

Each of these emails includes the session date and time, the location or join link, and a calendar invite.

Calendar invites (LMS-727)

Session emails carry an RFC 5545 invite that imports into Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple Calendar. No configuration is required — it is attached automatically.

Organizations on Microsoft 365 can go further: with a Microsoft 365 calendar connection, each published session also becomes a real Outlook event placed directly in registered learners’ calendars — created on publish, updated in place on reschedule, withdrawn on cancellation. The email attachments keep working either way.

All of these use the same event identity per session, so an update replaces the learner’s existing entry rather than creating a duplicate.

Announcements do not carry an invite — they are messages about a session, not changes to the booking.

When a session changes (LMS-725)

Editing a session does not always mean emailing everyone. Two different things happen depending on what you changed:

A title correction updates the calendar entry silently rather than announcing a reschedule that did not happen. Draft sessions never notify — nobody is registered yet.

The reschedule email shows the previous time struck through next to the new one, so a learner with several sittings can tell which one moved and what to clear from their diary.

When a learner leaves a session

Unregistering (or being removed from the roster by an admin) sends that learner a “Registration cancelled” email with an ICS that removes the session from their calendar. It is deliberately not the session-cancellation email — the session is still running for everyone else.

If a seat frees up, the first waitlisted learner is promoted automatically and receives a full registration confirmation with its own calendar invite.

7 - Scheduled report emails

Saved reports can be emailed on a schedule. See the Reports & Compliance guide for how to set one up. Those emails use the sender identity from section 2.

Configuration reference

Troubleshooting

A learner did not receive an enrollment email

1. Check that the email address on their profile is correct.
2. Ask them to check their spam folder and My Profile → Notification preferences (they may have turned that email off).
3. Check the Email log under Settings → Audit to see whether the email was sent, delivered or bounced. See Email audit.
4. An address that bounced, was marked as spam, or used a one-click unsubscribe is suppressed and receives no further email of that kind. Contact support to review a suppression.

Learners are not getting due-date emails

Due-soon and overdue notices are in-app only by default. To send them by email, enable a custom email for those types under Templates → Email (section 3). Also check that the enrollment has a due date: they are only sent for enrollments that have one.

Manager is not receiving overdue escalation

1. Confirm escalation is enabled under Settings → General (it is off by default).
2. Check the learner profile to confirm a Manager is set.
3. Confirm the manager has an active EmbayLMS account.
4. Confirm the grace period has passed (default: 1 day after the due date).
5. Check whether the manager opted out under My Profile → Notification preferences.
6. If they were emailed recently, the repeat cadence (default 7 days) may be holding back a second notice about the same assignment.

Manager received one email covering several people

That is intended: escalation is one digest per manager, not one email per overdue assignment.

My reworded email is not being used

Open the type under Templates → Email and check both language tabs. Each language is a separate override, and the box that starts with Use this override must be ticked.

A learner says they were unsubscribed without doing anything

Opening the footer link only shows a confirmation page; the opt-out is applied when the button is pressed, or when the person uses their mail client’s own Unsubscribe button. Check My Profile → Notification preferences for the affected person to see which single type is off, and turn it back on there. If the address is also suppressed, a bounce or spam complaint is the cause. Contact support to review it.

Learners reply to a notification and nobody sees it

Set a Reply-to address under Settings → Notifications. With no reply-to, replies go to the platform’s unmonitored sending address.

I set a sender name but the address still says embaylms.com

That is expected, see section 2.2. Only the name in front of the address is yours to set.

Related Guides

• Reports & Compliance
• Email audit
• User Management
• Instructor-led and virtual sessions