Why aren't rota reminders arriving?

Rota reminders quietly email everyone before their duty, until the Sunday somebody says they never got one. It’s nearly always one of the checks below, and the last one lets you prove whether the email was sent at all.

Working through the checks

1. Check the rota is published. Reminders are never sent from an unpublished rota, and a rota in draft is the most common cause of silence. The publishing status is on the rota’s Properties tab.
2. Check the ‘send email reminders’ box is ticked, also on the rota’s Properties tab.
3. Check the person’s own setting. Reminders default to on, sent three days before the event, but each person controls their own: they can change how many days ahead, or turn reminders off, from their profile on the website or app. As an administrator you can’t change this for them; they need to log in and do it themselves.
4. Check whether the email was actually sent: open the person’s record, select the Mail tab, and look for ‘Rota Reminders’ in the mailing channel column. If it was sent, the problem is at their end: ask them to check their junk folder and add your site’s sending address to their safe senders.
5. If several imported people are affected, that’s a known pattern: when the rota reminders field isn’t set in an import file, people can arrive with reminders off. A query with the ‘Rota Reminders Enabled?’ criteria set to disabled lists everyone affected, so you can ask them to switch it back on.

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Good to know

• Reminders go out in the early hours of the morning, when the servers are quiet; the send time can’t be changed.
• The reminder’s wording can be edited per rota with the ‘Edit the reminder email’ task on the rota, covered with screenshots in Rota reminders and sharing your rota; keep the merge fields in place so the dates and duties still fill in. There’s also a site-wide default under the email settings.
• A reminder is only as good as the rota behind it, so a quick glance at who’s actually on the rota is worth doing before hunting email problems.