Set up out-of-hours cover and emergency emails

When a tenant reports an emergency, the app sends you an email, not a call: it doesn’t watch your properties and can’t make sure anyone sees it. So your tenants also need a number to ring out of hours, and a new tenant page can’t be sent until you give one.

1. Go to Account › Repairs and tenants’ settings › Repairs settings.
2. Under Out of hours, choose Ring me on a number and enter Your number.
3. Or choose Ring someone covering for me, and enter Their name, Their number and Your own number, for after they stop. After their last day under Until, if you give one, your tenants are shown your number.
4. Under When it may be used, choose When I’m not usually available or At any time. Your times are under Times you’re usually available.
5. Open What reaches you, whose line says what is chosen now, and choose Emergencies only or Emergencies and urgent reports for the email from urgent@selfmanaged.co.uk.
6. For Other reports, and tenants’ messages, choose By email, at once or Only in the app.
7. Tap Save Changes.

Further down, Visits, Replies and questions and Your own targets each open with a tap, their line saying what is set. Visits sets the hours and days your visit times must fall in. Your own targets sets how soon you aim to deal with each kind of report: your own target, not a legal deadline. What your tenants are told previews what a tenant sees after an emergency at night: its first lines, then the rest with Show All.

Send a test emergency

1. In Repairs settings, tap Send Test Emergency, then Send Test Emergency again to confirm.
2. When the email marked TEST reaches your phone, tap It Arrived. If it doesn’t come, tap It Didn’t Arrive, look in your junk and other folders, and try again.

You can send up to three a day. At night the email may not wake you, and the surest way to be woken is a phone call: give your tenants a number, and choose At any time.

When a tenant reports an emergency

• The app emails you from urgent@selfmanaged.co.uk at once. For a report made on your tenant’s page, it emails again after 15 and 45 minutes until it’s opened. An email to your Selfmanaged address that names a danger is emailed to you once.
• There’s a daily limit on these emails. Beyond it, the report is in your app but not emailed, and a tenant reporting on their page is told so.
• The report stays at the top of Properties until you open it. Opening it records that you’ve seen it, and your tenant’s page then says so.
• It waits for you to tap Send to your trade, unless you’ve set emergencies to go as soon as they’re reported.

Try it in the sample account