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Messages and reminders

A job goes out, someone applies, the owner moves the time, a payment is due, a customer leaves a note on their order — HuanHuan tells you, so you don't have to keep refreshing. These are the pieces that handle it:

What Where What it covers
💬 Messages Third tab at the bottom (the side nav on a computer) Your conversations with owners / helpers, one thread per job
🔔 The bell Top right of every page Applications, accepted offers, reschedules, payouts, new customer orders, customer messages… in two tabs, Activity and Chat
Push notifications Me → Settings → 🔔 Push notifications Sends all of that to your phone's lock screen, even with the app closed
📧 Email notifications Me → Edit → Edit profile → add an email, then tick "Also notify me by email" Notifications you didn't look at in the app within a few minutes, combined into one email
WeChat reminders Mini program: Me → WeChat reminders Five kinds — New orders / New messages / Tomorrow's jobs / Job invites / Application results — delivered to WeChat Service Notifications; see WeChat mini program

💬 Messages: every conversation on one screen

The bottom bar is Today / Schedule / Messages / Collab / Ledger / Me, with Messages in third place. The page sums itself up in one line:

One thread per job, between you and the owner / helper. Price, timing and hours all get settled here.

Jobs you sent out, jobs sent to you, public-board jobs you applied for — whatever your role on the job, the thread is on this one list. Each row shows:

  • the other person's name, and which store's job it is;
  • your role on that job: "I'm the owner" or "I'm the helper";
  • the last message (yours start with "You: "), or "Nobody has spoken yet";
  • "1 new message" or "{n} new messages" when something is unread.

The order stays put. Threads with messages sort by the last message; threads where nobody has spoken yet go below them, newest invite / application first. Opening one doesn't make it jump around.

The red number on the Messages tab is how many threads have something new (threads, not messages).

Tap a row and you land on that job's detail page, chat box at the bottom. What the other person said is already open — no extra tap. Candidates you haven't talked to yet stay folded, so a job with five or six candidates doesn't turn into one long scroll.

If the job behind a thread has been withdrawn, tapping it shows "This conversation can’t be opened right now — the job may have been withdrawn."

The list is on the left and you reply on the right without leaving the page ("Open job ›" at the top right takes you to the detail). Until you pick one, the right side reads "← Pick a conversation to reply right here".

Nothing counts as read until you click it — opening Messages doesn't quietly mark the first thread read for you, so the other side only sees "read" on threads you actually opened.

New messages can only be sent in three states: Invited · awaiting reply / Accepted · in progress / Applied · awaiting confirm. In every other state (done, declined, removed) the thread is still there, marked "This job is closed — read only".

Messages go through a content safety check before they're sent

Every chat message is checked before it goes out. If one is blocked you'll see "This message did not pass the content safety check and was not sent. Please rephrase and try again." — the message is not sent; reword it and send again. The notice only says it didn't pass, it doesn't pass judgement: machine checks are sometimes wrong.

Only owners and helpers talk here; customer messages live in the inbox

The 💬 Messages page only holds threads that hang off a dispatch — a job you sent out, or a job you took. With nothing yet, the page says "No conversations yet. Once you send or take a job, this is where people reach you." To start one yourself, open any job — the chat box is at the bottom.

What customers write is not here. After a customer submits a self-order they get an order tracking page, and at the bottom of it is "Messages with the store" (the box reads "Anything to tell the store? Write it here"). When they write, you get a 🔔 "💬 A customer left a message on an order at {store}"; tapping it opens that store's self-order inbox, where the order's row has a "Messages" button that unfolds a reply box ("Reply to the customer…" → "Send"; before anyone has written it says "No messages yet. The customer sees your reply on their order tracking page."). Everything else with customers still goes through WeChat. The inbox itself is covered in Taking and reviewing orders.

🔔 The bell: Activity and Chat

Every page has a bell at the top right; the red number is what you haven't read.

  • On a phone it opens the full Notifications page.
  • On a computer it drops down a panel with the latest 10; "View all ›" opens the full page.

Both have two tabs, Activity (where it opens) and Chat, so messages don't get buried under applications, reschedules and payouts. The page intro: "Applications, accepted offers, reschedules and payout changes all land here."

  • Unread items are bold with a red dot; tap one to jump to that job or order, which also marks it read.
  • "Mark all read" clears the lot.
  • Several messages in a row from the same thread count as one unread item.

What you'll get

Every notification the app can send, grouped (store names, people and amounts are placeholders here):

  • 🌏 "{name} applied for your public job"
  • ✅ "{name} accepted your offer ($…)" — or "{name} declined your offer — consider inviting someone else"
  • 🏁 "{name} marked the job done — $… booked as helper cost"
  • "{name} withdrew their application"
  • 🛒 "New self-serve order at {store} — respond soon"
  • 💬 "A customer left a message on an order at {store}" — written on the order tracking page; you reply from the inbox (see above)

Stores with more than one owner notify every owner. Nobody is notified about their own taps.

  • 💼 "{store} offered you a job ($…)"
  • 🎉 "{store} confirmed your application — the job is yours" — or "{store} didn’t take your application this time"
  • 📅 "{store} updated a job you took (time/address changed) — tap to review"
  • 💲 "{store} changed the offer to $… — take another look"
  • ⏱ "{store} corrected the hours to …h — pay adjusted to $…"
  • 💰 "{store} marked $… as paid — check it arrived"
  • ❌ "{store} cancelled the subcontract — the job is off" · "{store} removed you from a job" · "Slots filled: {store}’s job went to someone else this time"
  • 💬 "New message from {name} ({store})" — under the Chat tab
  • the evening reminders below
  • a catch-all "Something new — tap to view" — rare; tapping it shows what it was

No customer details in notifications

Notifications carry store names, people's names, amounts and hours — never the customer's name, address or phone, and never the chat text itself. What you see after tapping through still depends on your role: a public-board applicant still sees only the general area until the owner confirms.

Every evening at 5, automatic reminders

Shortly after 5 pm Sydney time each day, the app checks the following and sends a notification to the 🔔 where needed (and to your phone, if push is on):

Reminder Who gets it When
📅 Job tomorrow Helper A job you accepted is on tomorrow. The time is the owner's; if the owner never set one, it uses the slot you planned yourself
📅 {n} job(s) tomorrow Owner Your store has jobs tomorrow — ones you do yourself and ones that are fully staffed all count. One summary per store per day, not one per job; tap it to jump to that day on the schedule
⚠️ Tomorrow’s job is {n} short Owner A dispatch is still Open, it's on tomorrow, and not enough people have accepted — "still time to invite or publish"
💸 Still unpaid Owner The helper finished 7 days ago and you haven't tapped Mark paid
⏳ Payment not marked yet Helper The same thing from the other side — "worth a nudge"
👀 Application waiting 48h Owner Someone applied for your public job and it has sat for 48 hours without a confirm or decline — "that's one of their 5 application slots"
⏳ Job date has passed Applicant A public-board job you applied for is already in the past — "consider withdrawing to free a slot"

They don't nag daily: "Job tomorrow", "{n} job(s) tomorrow" and "short" come at most once a day; unpaid, waiting applications and past-date applications are reminded once per job.

The first two rows are also where the mini program's "Tomorrow's jobs" WeChat reminder comes from — in the mini program the owner and helper versions share one allowance; see WeChat mini program · WeChat reminders.

Why remind about payments and applications?

HuanHuan never touches the money, so a helper's pay depends on the owner remembering to transfer it. After 7 days unpaid, both sides get a reminder — nobody has to rely on memory.

Applications are the same: one person can hold at most 5 open applications. Leaving one unreviewed ties up one of their slots.

Push notifications: even with the app closed

In the Me → Settings card, under "🔔 Push notifications", there is a button: "Enable push on this device". The line under it:

Applications, confirmations, reschedules and chats get pushed to this device — no need to keep the app open.

  • Per device: phone and computer are switched on separately. Once on, the button reads "On · tap to disable".
  • Android phones and Chrome on a computer: tap the button, allow notifications when the browser asks, done.
  • iPhone / iPad: install it to the home screen first. The page says: "On iPhone/iPad: Share → Add to Home Screen first, then open from the icon to enable push (iOS 16.4+)". How to install: see "Put it on your home screen" in Open a store in three minutes.
  • If you tapped "Don't allow" once before, you'll see "Notification permission was denied — allow it in browser settings and retry".

If you use the WeChat mini program there is a second, separate channel: reminders in WeChat Service Notifications, switched on under the mini program's Me → WeChat reminders. The two are switched on separately and neither replaces the other.

Too noisy? Mute by category

With push on, a line appears underneath — "Mute by category (push only — in-app notifications unaffected):" — with three ticks. Untick one to stop pushing that kind:

  • 💬 Chat messages
  • 🛒 New self-serve orders
  • Secondary activity (declines, withdrawals, payouts, daily reminders…) — the evening reminders above all count as this

Muting only decides what reaches your lock screen; the 🔔 still has everything.

The important ones always push and can't be muted: a job offer, your application being confirmed, a reschedule, a cancellation, corrected hours, a price change, a new public-board application, a helper marking a job done. Missing one of those actually costs you.

Lock-screen banners are Chinese for now (this is about web push)

The text of the banner that pops up on your lock screen is generated by the server and is Chinese-only for now — even with the app set to English or Español. Tap it and the app itself opens in your language. WeChat Service Notifications are a different thing; go by the WeChat mini program page for those.

📧 Email notifications: only what you missed, in one email

An email address is optional; adding one gives you a safety net. It lives on the identity card at the top of the Me page: tap "Edit" on the right → the "Edit profile" sheet → the email section (until you add one the card reads "No email yet").

  1. Tap "Add email", type the address, tap "Send code". You'll see "We sent a code to zhangjie@example.com. It is valid for 10 minutes. Check your spam folder if it does not arrive."
  2. Enter the "6 digits from the email", tap "Confirm", and you get "Email added".

Once added, the same section gains a tick box, "Also notify me by email", ticked by default. The rule is the line under it:

New applications, offers, schedule changes, orders, messages… Sent only if you have not looked in the app within a few minutes, and combined into one email.

So email only covers what you didn't see in the app: if you were in the app and opened the notification, no email follows; if several piled up unread, they arrive bundled in one message, not one email each. The page doesn't say exactly how many minutes or how long it waits to bundle, so don't treat it as an instant alert — push is the instant one.

  • To switch addresses: "Change email", same steps.
  • To drop it: "Remove", which asks "Remove the email "zhangjie@example.com"? You will stop getting email notifications." If you signed up with an email and haven't added a phone number yet, don't remove it — the email is your only way to log in; add a phone first, see Account and login.

How the three fit together: the 🔔 has everything → push only decides what pops on the lock screen (mutable by category) → email is the last-resort catch-up. In the HuanHuan Community, the tick box under Me → 「账号设置」(account settings) labelled 「站内通知也发到这个邮箱」(also send in-app notifications to this email) is the same switch — see Community: sign-up, sign-in and profile.

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