Alerts get a short, urgent message to your whole community at once, by dashboard banner, email, text message, or all three. This article covers sending an alert, who receives it, checking who it reached, text message billing, and dismissing or deleting alerts. For what residents see, see the article on using alerts.
Each part of Alerts is its own permission, granted per role:
Create Alert: can send alerts, and sees the delivery results on each alert, including who was and wasn't reached.
Dismiss Alert: can take down an active dashboard banner for the whole community.
Delete Alert: can permanently remove an alert from the Alerts page.
Turning the module on or off and setting the SMS Display Name require the Update Community Preferences permission. Some options may be unavailable or appear differently depending on your level of account access.
Turn on Alerts. Click Community in the main navigation menu, click the Preferences tab, and turn on the Alerts toggle. Alerts then appears in the main navigation menu for everyone.
Text and email alerts need a verified community. While Communitrak is still verifying a new community, or until you confirm your own email address, you can post a dashboard banner but can't send by text or email. The form tells you when this applies.
A community on a free trial can send one alert. That's one alert in total, whatever delivery methods it uses, and deleting it doesn't free up another. You can send more once your subscription begins. The form tells you before you start whether you've used it.
Log in to Communitrak at https://app.communitrak.com.
Click Alerts in the main navigation menu, then click New Alert.
Under Delivery Methods, select one or more:
Dashboard Banner: shows a banner at the top of everyone's Dashboard.
Email: sends to members' email inboxes.
SMS Text: sends a text message to members' mobile phones.
If you picked Email or SMS Text, check the estimate below the options, for example "Texts 42 of 50 members. Not reached: 5 have no usable mobile number on file, 3 turned off text alerts." It tells you before you send how many people the alert can actually reach, and why the rest won't get it (see Who receives an alert below).
Type your Alert Message. A counter below the box shows how many characters you've used out of the limit (see Message length below).
If you picked SMS Text, check the SMS Preview. It shows the exact text residents will receive, including your community's name at the start.
If you picked Dashboard Banner, choose how long the banner stays up under Dashboard Banner Expiration: 24 hours, 3 days, 1 week (the default), Custom to pick a date and time, or No expiration. A banner with no expiration stays until someone dismisses it.
Click Create Alert.
Review the confirmation, which lists the delivery methods you chose, and click Send Alert.
Email and text go out as soon as you click Send Alert. Alerts can't be edited, scheduled, or recalled once sent, so read the message over before you confirm.
Without SMS Text, messages can be up to 1,000 characters.
With SMS Text, the whole text, including your community's name, must fit in one text message of 160 characters. The longer your community's name, the less room for the message. Setting a shorter SMS Display Name (below) gives you more.
Emojis and special symbols aren't supported and are removed as you type, because they would split a text into several billed messages.
If your community uses AI features, the sparkle button next to Alert Message shortens what you've written into a brief alert.
In-app and push notification: every active member gets a Community Alert notification for every alert, whichever methods you chose, plus a push notification on each device where they've turned push on. Members can't turn these off. You don't get one for your own alert.
Dashboard banner: everyone who opens the Dashboard while the banner is active.
Email and text: members who have accepted their invitation, belong to an active household at an active property, have an email address or mobile number on file, and haven't turned off that channel under Community Alerts in their notification settings. You receive your own copy.
Someone who belongs to more than one household in the community gets one email and one text per alert, not one per property. Residents don't need to have verified their phone number to receive text alerts.
The estimate on the form gives one of three reasons for each member it can't reach:
No usable mobile number or no email address on file: the member needs to add one in their account.
Turned off text alerts or turned off email alerts: the member switched that method off in their notification settings. Only they can turn it back on.
Isn't in an active household: the member's household or property is inactive. Check their household.
Anyone with the Create Alert permission sees a delivery summary on each email or text alert:
Preparing to send… and Sending… 120 of 300, with a progress bar, while the alert goes out. Text alerts to a large community go out in batches over a few minutes. The page updates on its own.
Delivered to 300 members when everyone was reached.
Delivered to 290 of 300 members · 10 failed when some deliveries failed. If you used both email and text, a line for each shows below.
Sent to nobody — no eligible recipients when no one had a contact method on file for the methods you chose.
Click See who received it to open Alert delivery details, with one row per member and a Text and Email column:
A green check means Delivered, a red X means Failed, a gray symbol means Not sent, and a clock means Still sending.
Hover over a symbol to see why, such as No mobile number on file, Number on file is not a valid mobile number, Opted out of these alerts, or No active household or property.
Turn on Show not reached only to list just the members who got the alert by neither method. They're the people to follow up with another way.
Alerts sent before delivery tracking was added don't have a per-member record.
Each community gets 5 text alerts included per calendar month. Each text alert after that costs $2.00, charged to your community's Communitrak account right away. Billing is per alert, not per recipient, and a deleted text alert still counts toward the month's 5. Email alerts and dashboard banners have no charge.
When you pick SMS Text, the form shows how many of your 5 included text alerts you've used this month, and says so when the next one will be billed.
Every text alert starts with your community's name so residents know who it's from. For example: Sunset Ridge: The pool is closed today for maintenance. If your community's full name is long, set a shorter name to leave more room for the message.
Click Community in the main navigation menu, then click the Preferences tab.
In the Communication Preferences card, enter a short name in SMS Display Name. It can be up to 30 characters.
Click Save Communication Preferences.
Leave it blank to use your full community name. It only changes text alerts, not emails or banners.
The Alerts page lists every alert, with active banners first. Each card shows a status:
Active: the dashboard banner is still showing.
Sent: the alert went out by email or text only, with no banner.
Expired: the banner reached its expiration or was dismissed. The card shows when.
Use Search alerts... to search by message or sender name, and the All Alerts dropdown to show Active Only, Sent Only, or Expired Only.
Dismissing takes an active dashboard banner down for the whole community before it expires. The alert stays on the Alerts page as Expired.
On the Alerts page, click the Dismiss Alert button (the crossed-out eye) on an Active alert. Or click the X on the banner itself on the Dashboard.
Click Dismiss to confirm.
Dismissing only affects the banner. Emails and texts already sent stay sent.
Deleting removes an alert from the Alerts page for everyone, including its delivery details.
On the Alerts page, click the Delete Alert button (the trash can) on the alert.
Click Delete to confirm. This can't be undone.
Deleting doesn't recall anything. Emails and texts that already went out stay sent, texts still being sent to a large community keep going out, and the alert still counts toward your monthly text alerts (and your one trial alert, if you're on a free trial).
The dashboard banner appears on the Dashboard only, not on other pages.
If your community's Communitrak subscription is in a read-only state, New Alert, Dismiss Alert, and Delete Alert are unavailable.
Alerts are for short, urgent messages. Use the Bulletin Board for longer announcements and discussion.
If you have questions or need help, chat with Communitrak Support from any page using the messenger icon in the bottom-right corner.
