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Marc Pope edited this page Feb 6, 2026 · 2 revisions

Notifications

BBS provides a comprehensive notification system to alert you of backup events, failures, and system issues. Notifications appear in the web interface and can be sent via push notifications (Discord, Slack, Telegram, Pushover, and 100+ other services) and/or email.

Event Types

BBS monitors your backup infrastructure and generates notifications for 12 event types, organized into 6 categories:

Backups

Event Severity Description
Backup Completed Info A backup job finished successfully
Backup Failed Critical A backup job failed

Backup Completed notifications include the plan name, client name, file count, and duration. These are sent every time a backup completes (not deduplicated).

Backup Failed notifications include the error message. Repeated failures for the same plan are aggregated into a single notification with an occurrence count.

Restores

Event Severity Description
Restore Completed Info A restore job finished successfully
Restore Failed Critical A restore job failed

Clients

Event Severity Description
Client Offline Warning Agent hasn't sent a heartbeat in 3x the poll interval
Client Online Info Agent reconnected after being offline

Client Offline auto-resolves when the agent reconnects. Client Online is only generated if the client was previously marked offline.

Repositories

Event Severity Description
Check Failed Critical Repository integrity check failed
Compact Done Info Repository compact completed

Storage

Event Severity Description
Storage Low Warning Storage usage exceeds threshold (default 90%)
S3 Sync Failed Critical Offsite S3 sync failed
S3 Sync Done Info Offsite S3 sync completed

Storage Low auto-resolves when usage drops below the threshold.

Schedules

Event Severity Description
Missed Schedule Warning A scheduled backup didn't run within the expected window

Missed Schedule auto-resolves when the next backup runs successfully.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are the primary way to receive alerts outside the web interface. BBS uses Apprise to deliver notifications to 100+ services including Discord, Telegram, Slack, Pushover, ntfy, Gotify, email, webhooks, and more.

Configuring Push Notifications

Push notifications are managed at Settings > Push Notifications or on the standalone Notification Services page.

  1. Click Add Service
  2. Select a Service Type from the dropdown (Pushover, Discord, Slack, Telegram, Email, ntfy, or Custom)
  3. Fill in the guided form fields for your chosen service
  4. Select which events should trigger notifications for this service
  5. Click Save

You can create multiple services with different event selections. For example:

  • Discord — subscribe to all failure events for your team channel
  • Pushover — subscribe to everything for personal mobile alerts
  • Email — subscribe to critical failures only as a backup delivery method

Supported Service Types

BBS includes guided setup forms for these common services:

Service URL Format Notes
Pushover pover://user_key@app_token Mobile push notifications
Discord discord://webhook_id/webhook_token Channel webhooks
Slack slack://tokenA/tokenB/tokenC/#channel Workspace integrations
Telegram tgram://bot_token/chat_id Bot messages
Email mailto://user:pass@smtp.host:port?to=recipient&from=sender Direct SMTP delivery
ntfy ntfy://topic or ntfys://topic Self-hosted or ntfy.sh
Custom Any Apprise-compatible URL Full list of 100+ services

Per-Service Event Selection

Each notification service has its own set of event subscriptions. When adding or editing a service, check the events you want to receive. Events are grouped by category with color-coded badges:

  • Green — Success events (Backup Completed, Restore Completed, Client Online, Compact Done, S3 Sync Done)
  • Red — Failure events (Backup Failed, Restore Failed, Check Failed, S3 Sync Failed)
  • Yellow — Warning events (Client Offline, Storage Low, Missed Schedule)

Testing a Service

Click the Test button next to any configured service to send a test notification. BBS will report success or display the error message if delivery fails.

Apprise Requirement

Push notifications require Apprise to be installed on the BBS server:

pip3 install apprise

BBS will show a warning on the Push Notifications tab if Apprise is not detected.

Email Notifications

BBS can also send email alerts to all admin users when specific events occur. This uses the SMTP configuration on the Settings > Email Settings tab and is separate from push notification services.

Configuring Email Alerts

  1. Navigate to Settings > Email Settings
  2. Configure SMTP settings (host, port, username, password, encryption)
  3. Enable the notification toggles for each event type you want to receive via email
  4. Click Save
  5. Use the Test SMTP button to verify your configuration

Email Notification Toggles

All 12 event types can be individually enabled/disabled for email delivery:

Event Recommended
Backup Failed Yes (critical)
Agent Offline Yes (infrastructure)
Storage Low Yes (proactive)
Missed Schedule Optional (can be noisy)
S3 Sync Failed Yes (offsite backup issue)
Backup Completed Optional (can be noisy)
Restore Completed Optional
Restore Failed Yes
Client Online Optional
Check Failed Yes
Compact Done Optional
S3 Sync Done Optional

SMTP Configuration Examples

Gmail

SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
SMTP Port: 587
Encryption: TLS
Username: your-email@gmail.com
Password: your-app-password (not regular password)

Note: Gmail requires an "App Password" if 2FA is enabled. Generate at: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords

Microsoft 365

SMTP Host: smtp.office365.com
SMTP Port: 587
Encryption: TLS
Username: your-email@yourdomain.com
Password: your-password

SendGrid

SMTP Host: smtp.sendgrid.net
SMTP Port: 587
Encryption: TLS
Username: apikey
Password: YOUR_SENDGRID_API_KEY

Email Format

Email subjects follow the format: [BBS] Event Name

Email body includes:

  • Notification message with details
  • Timestamp
  • Server signature

Web Interface

Notification Bell

The notification bell icon in the top navigation bar shows:

  • Badge count of unread, unresolved notifications
  • Click to open a dropdown with recent notifications
  • View All link to the full notifications page

Notifications Page

Access the full list at /notifications or via "View All" in the dropdown.

Column Description
Message Full notification message with details
Client Client name
Severity Critical (red), Warning (yellow), or Info (blue) badge
Last Occurred Timestamp of most recent occurrence
Status New, Read, or Resolved

Managing Notifications

  • Mark as Read — Click the checkmark icon next to a notification
  • Mark All as Read — Button at top of page to dismiss all at once
  • Resolved notifications are automatically moved below active ones

Notification Behavior

Deduplication

BBS intelligently handles repeated notifications:

  • Failure/warning events (backup_failed, agent_offline, etc.) are deduplicated. If the same event fires again before being resolved, the existing notification's occurrence count increments and the timestamp updates. Push/email notifications only fire on the first occurrence.
  • Success/info events (backup_completed, s3_sync_done, etc.) always send. Each occurrence creates a fresh notification and triggers push/email delivery, because users want to know every time a backup completes.

Auto-Resolve

Some notifications resolve automatically:

Event Resolves When
Client Offline Agent reconnects
Storage Low Usage drops below threshold
Missed Schedule Next backup runs successfully
Backup Failed Next backup for same plan succeeds

Notification Retention

Resolved notifications are automatically cleaned up based on the Notification Retention setting (default: 30 days). Configure this in Settings > General.

Troubleshooting

Push Notifications Not Sending

Check these in order:

  1. Apprise installed? — Run which apprise on the BBS server
  2. Service enabled? — Verify the service is toggled on (not disabled)
  3. Events selected? — Verify the event type is checked for that service
  4. Test button works? — Click Test on the service to check connectivity
  5. Server log — Check the server log page for "Push notification failed" entries with error details

Emails Not Sending

  1. Verify SMTP settings with the Test SMTP button
  2. Check spam/junk folder
  3. Ensure firewall allows outbound SMTP (port 587 or 465)
  4. Check /var/log/apache2/error.log for SMTP errors
  5. Verify the from address is authorized by your SMTP provider

Notification Bell Not Updating

  • Hard refresh: Ctrl+Shift+R (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac)
  • Log out and back in if session expired

Related Documentation

  • Settings — SMTP and push notification configuration
  • Queue-and-Jobs — Understanding job failures that trigger notifications
  • Troubleshooting — Resolving issues that cause notifications

📖 User Manual

Getting Started

Using BBS

Monitoring

Administration

Reference

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