Notification Preferences & Per-Observation Notifications¶

Document Version: 2.5 | Last Updated: March 2026

The Science Scheduler can notify you when your observations change state — via email and/or Pushover push notifications.

Overview¶

Notifications alert you when observations transition between states (e.g., assigned, in progress, completed, failed). You choose which channels to use and which state changes matter to you, on a per-observation basis.

Notification Channels¶

Email¶

Uses your account email address. No extra setup is needed beyond enabling the channel in your profile.

Pushover¶

Pushover is a service that delivers push notifications to your phone, tablet, or desktop. To use Pushover notifications:

Create an account at pushover.net
Install the Pushover app on your device(s)
Copy your User Key from the Pushover dashboard
(Optional) Note your device names if you want to target specific devices — enter them as comma-separated values (e.g., phone,tablet)

Setting Up Notification Preferences¶

Configure your notification channels from your Profile page.

Enabling Email Notifications¶

Navigate to your Profile page
Scroll to Notification Preferences
Check Enable Email Notifications
Your account email is displayed — notifications will be sent there

Enabling Pushover Notifications¶

Check Enable Pushover Notifications
Enter your Pushover User Key
(Optional) Enter Device Names — comma-separated list of Pushover device names to target specific devices
Click Save

In view mode, your Pushover key is displayed in masked form (*********xyz). Click Edit Pushover Settings to modify your key or device names.

Category Toggles (Server Administrators)¶

Server administrators have additional toggles to control which categories of notifications they receive:

Category	Description
Observation Events	Per-observation state changes (assigned, in progress, completed, failed, etc.)
System Events	Server start notifications, missing star database alerts, and other system-level alerts

Admin only

Category toggles are only visible to users with the Server Administrator role. Regular users receive observation notifications based on their per-observation settings and do not see these toggles.

Testing Notifications¶

Click the Test Notifications button in your notification preferences to send a test message through each enabled channel. You'll see per-channel success or error feedback so you can verify delivery before relying on notifications for real observations.

Per-Observation Notifications¶

When creating or resubmitting an observation, you can configure exactly which notifications to receive for that observation.

Where It Appears¶

The notification section appears in the submission form after observatory selection and above External Storage Destinations. It is only visible if you have enabled at least one notification channel in your profile.

Configuring Notifications¶

Channel selection — Check which channels to use for this observation:
- Email (only shown if email is enabled in your profile)
- Pushover (only shown if Pushover is enabled in your profile)
State selection — When either channel is checked, choose which state transitions trigger a notification:
- Assigned
- In Progress
- Suspended
- Complete
- Failed
- Aborted
- Cancelled

Note

All states are pre-selected by default.

Resubmission Behavior¶

When you resubmit an observation, your notification preferences are copied from the original observation. You can modify them before submitting.

Notification Content¶

Email Notifications¶

Email notifications are styled HTML messages containing:

Observation name and ID
Target coordinates (RA/Dec)
Observatory name
Timestamp of the state change
Status-specific details (completion statistics, failure reasons, etc.)
View Observation button linking to the observation detail page

Pushover Notifications¶

Pushover notifications use a terse message format with:

Observation name and new status
Deep link to the observation in the web interface
Priority levels based on status:

Status	Pushover Priority
Failed, Aborted	High (may bypass quiet hours)
All other states	Normal

System Notifications¶

System notifications are sent to server administrators for important server-level events.

Server Start Notification¶

When the server starts, all server admins receive a notification (email and Pushover) with:

Server IP address
Server version
Start timestamp

Pushover Not Configured Warning¶

If the PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN environment variable is not set on the server, an email-only warning is sent to admins on startup. Pushover notifications will not function until this is configured.

Missing Star Database Alert¶

If the FITS processor cannot find ASTAP star catalogs (.290 or .1476 files in /usr/share/astap/data), an error notification is sent to all server admins. The notification includes instructions to download catalogs from hnsky.org.

Plate solving will not work without star catalogs

If you receive this alert, plate solving will fail for all uploaded FITS files until the catalogs are installed.

Audience Targeting¶

System notifications can be sent to different audiences:

Target	Description
`ALL_USERS`	All registered users
`ALL_SERVER_ADMINS`	Users with the server admin role
`ALL_OBSERVATORY_OWNERS`	All observatory owners
`ALL_OBSERVATORY_ADMINS`	Users with `can_admin` on any observatory

User Preference Filtering¶

System notifications respect each user's preferences:

Channel toggles — email_enabled and pushover_enabled control which channels deliver the notification
System events toggle — Server administrators can disable the system_events category to suppress system notifications
Pushover priority — Based on notification severity: error = high, warning = normal, info/success = quiet

Important Notes¶

Fire-and-forget — Notification delivery failures do not affect observation processing. If an email or Pushover message fails to send, the observation continues normally.
Email verification — Your email must be verified to receive email notifications.
Server configuration — Pushover notifications require the server administrator to configure the PUSHOVER_APP_TOKEN environment variable. Email notifications work without any server-side Pushover configuration.