Setting up Total Connect 2.0 Notifications

Hi, DIYers, this is Michael from Alarm Grid. And today I'm going to be showing you how to set up notifications in Total Connect 2.0. Notifications, they inform you about events that occur on your system. You can get notifications via text message and/or email. When you have access to Total Connect 2.0, you'll be able to set up notifications. It's one of the biggest reasons to use Total Connect. So that way you know about what's going on with your system. It's particularly important if you're a self-monitoring customer, meaning that you don't have central station monitoring service, because this is the only way that any action will be taken regarding events on your system. Because you won't have a central station with dispatchers to send out authorities or help automatically, or to contact you by calling you if something goes wrong on your system, if there is an intrusion, or a fire, or some other emergency. So setting up notifications, it's really important. Now, some users struggle to figure out the process for setting up notifications, but once you learn how to do it, it's really not too bad. Really, it's mostly a four step process. I'm going to go through all of it. But basically, you have to build user profiles. And then every user profile can be assigned email addresses and/or phone numbers. So those are used as contact points. And then you build notification groups, of the user profiles. And you can put multiple users into a group. And those will be the individuals who are contacted based on the emails and phone numbers you provided. And then when you're actually building the notifications, the final step, the actual-- what events will trigger the notifications to be sent out, you assign notification groups to the notifications. And then when those events occur, the notification groups are alerted, which means the users are alerted within the notification groups, and the emails and phone numbers that are assigned will be notified. So that's how notifications work. So I'm going to go through the entire process here. I'm going to start by building user profiles. So we have Total Connect pulled up on our tablet here. You can do this using the web browser. You can do it using either version of the mobile app-- the Android mobile app or the iOS mobile app. Just be aware that the layout may be a little bit different depending on what you're using. We're using Android today, so keep that in mind. The process is exactly the same no matter what you're using. Just know that the menu icons may be in different locations. So keep that in mind. All right, so we're at our tablet here. We're at the main screen of Total Connect after logging in. So we're first going to set up users. So we're going to go to Settings, and then we're going to choose Users. I'm just going to wait for it to load here. So now we have the ability to add a new user, or we can go to our profile if we want. In our case, we want to add a new user, so we're going to click the person with the plus icon next to them to add a user. And now I want to talk about the user types, or as I like to call it, the authority levels. So there there's admin, which is basically the same as a standard user, but it can also configure other user profiles. So it can add and edit, change other users. So it can go into Total Connect and actually move around the settings a little bit. So that's the highest level of authority that you can choose from. Standard-- you're only going to have limited control. You're not going to be able to go and edit other user profiles. So that's more if someone's using the system regularly and they should have access to the system, but they shouldn't be able to edit other user profiles, then that's probably the one they want. And then panel only. That means they're only going to have access at the security panel. Whether it's your Lyric or your LYNX Touch, or your VISTA, whatever you're using, they're not going to able to go into Total Connect. So that's not what we want. Really, we're just setting up notifications today, so this isn't super important. For our demonstration, I'm going choose admin, but you can also set this up with standard. So either authority level would work probably. But we'll go with admin today, just so we have access to everything. And as we're waiting for it to load again. OK, we're at our user profile, and we can add a picture in if we want to. We'll just make our name Test, and we'll make our last name Alarm, Test Alarm. And then our username, we'll try and see if we just do one big testalarm. And we want our user type to be Admin. And we want our language to be English, that's our preference. You can choose whatever language you use. And we have our time format. You can choose a 12-hour time format or the 24-hour military time. We're comfortable with the 12-hour time in our case. And then the prompt for user code options. So if you enable this, then that means if you go to arm or disarm your system from the Total Connect app remotely, it's going to ask you for the four digit user code that you assign. So we don't need to do this. We don't need it to ask us for a code. We already logged in with our credentials. So we're going to leave it off. But if you want to enable it to for extra security, you want to enter the code number when you arm or disarm your system remotely from the app, then you can enable that. So we'll continue here. And now we're providing the contact information. This is the email and the phone numbers that I talked about, the ones that we'll be contacted in the event of a notification being sent out. So we'll do test@alarmgrid.com as an email, and we'll confirm it. There you go, test@alarmgrid.com. And then you see, you can add additional emails if you want to. You can also add SMS for text notifications. And we'll go ahead and we'll throw on a phone number. We'll just throw in our contact number 888-818-7728. Of course, you can't text this number actually, but we're just doing this for demonstration purposes how you would enter a phone number. And it's 7728, and we don't really have a carrier, but we'll just use AT&T. So that's how you add emails and you add phone numbers. Remember, these are the ones that are going to be contacted when the notification is sent out, so make sure to configure these correctly. You see the trashcan icon next to them if you want to delete any of them. And so we'll press continue. And we're now choosing which devices we have access to. You see, we have our system called the office Lyric. We'll go ahead and give ourselves access. And I'll go ahead and enter a user code, so that way we can enter codes at the panel locally. This actually has nothing to do with notifications, but if you do want to set this user account up, so that way you can control your system locally at the panel as well from Total Connect, you will need to do this. So we'll enter in a user code, we'll just do 4444. So that way, that code is going to get pushed down to the panel, and this user will be able to control it locally. So make sure you don't miss this as you're going through it. And you can see all the devices that are on the Lyric. And we can have the option to go and create another user if we want to by checking the box down here. But we're just creating the one today. So we'll go at the top, in the top right, we'll choose Create User. And it's now making the user. Just give it a second. And it lets us know that the user code has been changed on the Lyric, and automation sync has been initiated. So that's good. We'll press OK. And a welcome email has been sent. You will need to verify your email, so make sure you choose a valid email. And make sure if you do provide a phone number for SMS text notifications that the number you provide is legitimate. Don't use a fake email or a fake phone number. You won't get the notifications, and you won't be able to finish setting everything up. So we'll click OK. And there, so we've done the first two steps. We've created the user profiles, and we've added a phone number to the email-- to the user profile. We've added the phone number and email to the user profile. So now we're going to go, and we're going to build the notification groups. We'll press the back arrow in the upper left. And we're just going to do that again, and again. And now we're going to Notifications. And now we're going to Groups. So we have our groups set up now. We have a few groups in here. And to create a new group, if you're trying to set a new collection of user profiles that you want to be notified when a notification is sent out, you're going to make the new group. It's with the two people up there with the plus icon. Just click on that. And we're making a new group. So we're going to give it a name. You have the default option of a new notification group, which if you want to use that, that's fine. We'll just call it the Group. Group alarms, just in case we get lost with Group. So that way it'll stand out. It's the Group alarms. That's what we've named it. And then we add and remove users. We'll click Yes. And we have the options for test alarm and video Lyric. Let's say we didn't want video Lyric to be in there. We just wanted test alarm. And so we'll click Create Group. And it says the new notification group has been successfully created. So it's loading again. All right, Group alarms, that's the notification group we'll be working with today. And the user in there is Test Alarms. That's the user profile we made. So we have our group set up with just one user. You can add multiple users if you need to, which a lot of you will be. But if you're just using the system by yourself, then that's fine. And so we're going to back out now. And now we're going to actually build the notification, which is really the most important part. This is what's going to trigger the alert to be sent out. This is when Total Connect will know to notify you when a certain event occurs. So we're loading the My Notifications screen. We clicked that within the submenu there. And it's just loading up. All right, so we have a list of notifications here. And to build a new one, we click the three horizontal bars with the plus icon to add the notification. And we can choose the type of notification. We have security options, which is where most of the notifications will come from. You also have cameras, video doorbell, devices, whatever you want to be notified about. In our case, we'll choose Security. And then we can choose what type of notification we want to receive alerts about. This will depend on what type of notification you're setting up. Arming, of course, deals with arming and disarming activities related to your system. You can get notifications about sensor alarms. Sensor other, just trouble when it's bypassed. Let's go with sensor alarms. We want to be notified during an alarm event. So we can choose, well, first of all, we can choose a notification name. And we'll say we're setting this up for a fire emergency. So we'll call it Fire alerts. And then we choose when the trigger notification is sent. In our case, we'll choose fire emergency accordingly. You can choose multiple ones if you want to, but we'll make this a fire alert. So we're going to choose that one. And we're going to choose Continue. And then you can create a notification schedule. Maybe you didn't want to be notified at certain times of the day, like just during the day when there's routine activity. Like maybe your notification involved when a sensor is faulted. And the sensor gets faulted all the time during the day while people are using the building, maybe at your business, and you don't care about that. But if someone were to open the door at 3:00 AM, you'd be a little concerned, and you want to be notified about it. So you create a schedule for after hours, for instance. But in our case, we'll just choose the Always option. We always want to be notified about a fire. But you can create your schedule accordingly. And we'll click Continue. And then we choose the group that receives the notifications. Remember, the group contains the user profiles, which in turn contain the text message numbers and the email addresses for sending out notifications. And you have the pencil icon on the right-hand side if you need to adjust the group at all. But we have our group, Group alarms, at the bottom. We'll use that one. There's also a button you can create a group if you forgot to do that earlier. But we have our group, so we'll click Continue. And then you can choose if we want video capture to occur. So when the notification is sent out, you can have your cameras-- if you have cameras on your system, you will need a plan with cameras to begin recording. So that's an option as well. But we're not going to do that for ours. We'll just click Save. And it asks us if we're sure if we want to save our changes. And we are, so we'll click Yes. And it's just completing the process here. And there, so let's see if we can find our notification down here. There, Fire alert down there under Security. So it's a bit hidden in there, because we have other notifications that are set up, but you do see it right there. I'll toggle it off just so we can see it. And then it's saving the changes you want to toggle it off. Make sure you do toggle yours on, so that way you do have the notifications sent out. You see ours, with it gray right now, it's off. So we'll just toggle it back on. I just wanted to show you how it would look if we toggled it on and off. But the notification is set up, so we can press the back arrow in the upper left corner and get back to our main menu. We'll do that a few times. Just get back to our main screen here. The notification is saved and ready to go at this point. Just want to get us in the right spots. So we're back at the main screen of Total Connect. So that's how you set up notifications for Total Connect 2.0. So that way you're alerted via text and/or email when events occur on your security system. They're totally customizable. You can set them up for virtually anything. So check them out, play around with it a little bit, and see how you can get notifications. But just as a recap, it's that four step process. You have to build the user profiles. You assign emails and/or phone numbers to the user profiles. And then you build notification groups of one or more user profiles. And then you build the notifications and you assign the notification groups to the user profiles. So if you have any questions about Total Connect 2.0 or about alarm monitoring service, send an email to support@alarmgrid.com. If you found this video helpful, make sure to give it a thumbs up below to like the video. And remember to subscribe to our channel for updates on future videos. We hope you enjoy the video. Thank you.