We’ve received requests for the ability to notify someone who has their status set to Do Not Disturb (DND), especially for critical and urgent messages that need immediate attention. We’d love to get your feedback on the solution we’ve put together.
Bypassing Do Not Disturb with ‘Urgent’ Messages
We wanted to provide a predictable way for users to notify someone in DND mode in Direct Messages, Group Messages, or Channels. Building on the existing Message Priority feature, the proposal is that any message marked as Urgent will bypass DND and trigger a notification for the recipient, regardless of their status.
Here’s how this will work in different scenarios:
Direct Messages and Group Messages
In Direct Messages and Group Messages, when the recipient’s status is set to DND, you’ll see a note above the message input box informing you that they are in DND mode. It will also mention that you can use the Urgent message priority to notify them.
Channels
In a Channel, if you @mention someone who is in DND, you’ll be informed after sending the message that they may not have been notified. You can then choose to send another message marked as Urgent to bypass their DND status and notify them anyway.
Note: Thread replies do not support message priority, so you won’t be able to bypass DND in that context.
Unlocking mission-critical use cases
This feature enables users to manage critical communications more effectively. For example, on-call staff who need to respond quickly to incidents after hours can keep their status set to DND to avoid non-urgent interruptions. Prioritizing notifications for Urgent messages will ensure they receive only critical notifications without being disturbed by regular messages. They can then configure their devices to let Mattermost bypass the OS-level DND settings, allowing them to still be reachable for urgent matters.
Enabling the feature
System Admins can enable or disable the ability for Urgent messages to bypass DND for all users on the server through a new configuration in the System Console.
Share your feedback
That’s a quick overview of the feature. Is this something you would find valuable? We’d love to hear your thoughts and any suggestions you might have. We’re also working on a more in-depth UX specification if you want to get into the details.