# Message of the Day (/docs/plugins/message-of-the-day)



Message of the Day puts a notice in front of your whole team. You write a message, and every staff member sees it in a modal the next time they sign in to the dashboard -- no email, no group chat, and no relying on whoever was on shift to pass it along.

It is a **plugin**: install and enable it from **Plugins > Browse Plugins** before it appears. Nothing to configure -- enabling it is enough.

When to use it, versus Broadcasts [#when-to-use-it-versus-broadcasts]

These two look similar and do different jobs:

* **Message of the Day** is a standing in-app notice. It waits for people to sign in, and it tracks who has read it.
* **[Broadcasts](/docs/plugins/broadcasts)** pushes a one-off email or text out immediately. Better when the message needs to reach people who are not about to open the dashboard -- a weather cancellation going to booked customers, for example.

Use Message of the Day for things staff need to know *when they start work*. Use Broadcasts when the message needs to travel to them.

Severity, and what it changes [#severity-and-what-it-changes]

Severity does more than pick a colour -- it decides whether the message comes back.

| Severity      | Appearance | Behaviour                                                                                                                                  |
| ------------- | ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Info**      | Blue       | Dismissed once read, and does not come back.                                                                                               |
| **Important** | Amber      | Dismissed once read, and does not come back.                                                                                               |
| **Critical**  | Red        | **Reappears at every sign-in.** Cannot be closed with the X, the Escape key, or by clicking outside -- only by pressing **I acknowledge**. |

Critical is for things like a changed safety procedure, where you want everyone to see it repeatedly and to have deliberately confirmed it rather than clicked past a popup. Because it never stops showing on its own, give a critical message an end date unless it genuinely is permanent.

Read receipts are recorded for all three severities.

Who sees it [#who-sees-it]

A message goes either to **everyone in the company** or to **specific locations**.

When you target locations, the audience is every active staff member who has access to at least one of those locations. Users with company-wide access are always included, because they can work at any location.

Scheduling [#scheduling]

**Show from** and **Stop showing** are both optional:

* Leave both blank and the message goes live the moment it is published, and stays live until you unpublish or delete it.
* Set **Show from** to schedule a message in advance -- write Friday's notice on Wednesday.
* Set **Stop showing** to have it retire itself.

Unpublished messages are drafts. Nobody sees a draft, regardless of its window.

Read receipts [#read-receipts]

Because dismissal is recorded against the **person** rather than the browser, the manage page can show exactly who has read a message and who has not.

This is also why it works correctly on a shared front-desk terminal: one person clearing the notice does not clear it for the next person who signs in on that machine, and a manager who uses a desktop, a tablet, and a phone is only shown the message once.

Open a message from the list to see **read by N of M**, and expand **Hasn't read** for the names.

Someone who has left the company or been deactivated drops out of both numbers.

Editing and republishing [#editing-and-republishing]

Editing a message does **not** re-notify anyone by default. Fix a typo, correct a time, tidy the wording -- the people who already read it stay undisturbed.

When you genuinely want everyone to see it again, tick **Republish to everyone** when you save. That resets the read receipts and puts the message back in front of every staff member, including the ones who had already dismissed it.

This is deliberate: without it, either every small correction would nag the whole team, or a substantive rewrite would silently reach nobody.

Permissions [#permissions]

Writing messages and viewing receipts requires the **Message of the Day (manage)** permission (`plugin_motd:manage`), which you grant per user under **Team**. Administrators have it automatically.

Everyone else simply sees the messages -- no permission needed to read the notice board.

What staff see [#what-staff-see]

The message appears shortly after the dashboard finishes loading, once per sign-in. If there are several messages waiting, they are shown one at a time, most severe first, with a count of how many remain.

Only one prompt opens per visit, so a message of the day takes precedence over Resytech's own prompts (such as the install-the-app or enable-notifications asks) rather than stacking on top of them.