What this helps you do
Sending a Blast delivers your message to the phones and computers of everyone in the audience you pick, and by email to the residents who chose email. You can send now, schedule for later, or repeat weekly. The composer supports formatting, links and images (a detour map), up to three attached files (the agenda PDF), a YES / NO reply the Hub counts, and Send a test to me so you see exactly what residents will receive.
When to use it
Use it for the notices residents are glad to get: a road or lane closure, a water main break, planned utility work, a hydrant flushing schedule, a collection day that moves for a holiday, a park or facility closure, a meeting or hearing, a household hazardous waste day, a public event, and the operational updates during a storm. Use it beside, never instead of, the notice your municipality is required to publish.
How to do it
- Open Send, or start from one of the starter templates your Hub seeds for advisories, closures, collection changes, meetings and facility notices.
- Pick an audience: a service, a route, a neighbourhood you created, or All Residents when it genuinely affects everyone connected.
- Write what happened, where, when it ends, and what the resident should do. Attach the detour map or the agenda (up to three files, 5 MB each).
- For a meeting or an open house where the headcount matters, ask for a YES / NO reply and the Hub counts the answers.
- If the notice is one you are required to publish, say in the message where the official version is and link it.
- Read the Delivery panel: one Blasts credit per resident on Blasts, one email credit per email.
- Click Send a test to me, then Send now, Schedule for later, or Repeat weekly for a recurring collection reminder.
- If you are sending to All Residents or to Emergency & Urgent Operations, confirm with your passkey or on your phone when asked.
Example
A main breaks at 6 a.m. and a water advisory is issued for the east side. The official notification goes out exactly as the procedure requires. The public works superintendent then opens the Hub, picks the east-side district audience, writes what is affected, what to do, where the official notice lives, and when the next update comes, and sends. At 4 p.m. the follow-up goes to the same audience, and the counter spends the day answering fewer of the same question.
Good to know
- This channel reaches the residents who chose to connect, which is a share of the town and never all of it. Write every message as though the reader may be the only person on their street who gets it.
- An immediate send is held for about a minute so you can cancel it from Sent & Scheduled; nothing is charged for a cancelled Blast.
- Delivered and read counts come from confirmed actions in the Blasts app, not open pixels. A read is not an acknowledgement and is not proof of notice: ask for a YES / NO reply when you need an answer from a person.
- The Hub composer does not send campaign badges, countdowns, calendar attachments, voice messages, polls or self-destruct timers. Those are Blasts-app sender features, not things this composer sends.
- Recurring messages, such as a weekly collection reminder, are managed under Sent & Scheduled: pause, resume or delete them there.
- The Hub suggests the hour your messages are read most, based on the last 60 days.