When Alerts Wake Your Phone
How Kilo alarm severity decides when a push wakes the phone or arrives as a quiet notification.
Not every alarm should interrupt a responder the same way. A compliance breach in cold storage needs to wake someone at 3 AM; a routine status confirmation does not. IoT Alerts maps the severity you assign each alarm definition onto a matching level of phone intrusion — from a full-screen alarm that overrides silent mode down to a quiet entry in the notification list.
The severity travels with the alarm event from the web platform to the device. You don't configure intrusion on the phone; you control it by choosing the right severity when you author the alarm definition.
Severity to phone behavior
Critical
A full-screen alarm opens, with a looping alarm tone and vibration that continue until the responder acts. It is designed to break through silent mode and a Focus or Do Not Disturb schedule (see below). This is the only level that wakes the phone.
High / Medium
A prominent, attention-getting notification with sound and vibration. It surfaces above ordinary notifications but does not open the alarm screen or loop a tone.
Low / Info
A quiet notification that lands in the normal notification list with no sound or vibration. It is a normal, visible notification you'll see when you next check the phone — not a hidden background message.
If an alarm ever arrives without a severity, the app treats it as Critical rather than risk silencing something urgent.
The practical rule for designing alarms: reserve Critical for events that genuinely justify overriding a responder's silent phone. Use High or Medium for events that warrant a prompt, noticeable nudge, and Low or Info for awareness you don't want to escalate into an interruption.
Breaking through silent mode and Do Not Disturb
A Critical alarm can reach a responder whose phone is silenced or on a Focus / Do Not Disturb schedule because the app holds Apple's Critical Alerts approval on iOS and uses the equivalent high-priority alarm path on Android. Two conditions apply:
The responder must grant the Critical Alert permission when the app first asks (or later in the phone's notification settings). If it was declined, Critical alarms fall back to the phone's normal silent and Focus behavior.
Only Critical uses this path. High, Medium, Low, and Info all respect the phone's own notification, sound, and Focus settings — so a muted phone may show them quietly or hold their sound.
This is the distinction worth communicating to your on-call team: ordinary alarms can be quieted by a responder's phone settings, but a Critical alarm — with permission granted — is the approved path that breaks through.
Acting on a Critical alarm
When the full-screen alarm is showing, the responder has two actions:
Close — silences the alarm tone on that phone only. The alarm event stays active in Kilo, other recipients still see it, and escalation continues if configured.
Dismiss & Acknowledge — silences the alarm and resolves the event in Kilo for everyone, which also halts further escalation steps.
For the full picture of resolving versus closing, and working the Inbox, see Acknowledge and Resolve.
Delivery conditions
Push delivery depends on the phone's state. If the app has been force-stopped or swiped away, delivery can be limited until it's reopened, and aggressive battery optimization on some Android devices can delay it — allowing the app to run in the background improves reliability. Because no single phone is guaranteed, build escalation chains that move to another responder if the first does not acknowledge, rather than relying on one device.
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