Weather alerts and customer notifications
PoolHelm watches the forecast at every pool on today’s routes and asks you a question only when a real storm is likely to be over a stop when your tech arrives. It never reschedules anything on its own. You make every call.
What counts as a storm
A stop gets flagged when one of two things is true:
- Thunderstorms are likely at that stop’s arrival time. PoolHelm uses the forecast for the pool’s own location, checks it against the tech’s live arrival estimate, and waits for two readings in a row to agree so a passing blip doesn’t cry wolf.
- The National Weather Service has issued a warning — severe thunderstorm, tornado, flash flood, or high wind — covering that stop. Official warnings are flagged immediately.
Rain on its own never raises an alert. Your techs work through rain; PoolHelm doesn’t interrupt them for it. On an ordinary day the Weather section on Today shows the current conditions and nothing else.
What you’ll see on Today
When a storm is flagged, a Storm decisions block appears in the Weather section with one row per affected stop:
- Skip & Notify — the stop comes off today’s route and PoolHelm drafts the message explaining the reschedule. Skip all & notify does the same for every flagged stop.
- Keep — you’ve looked at it and the visit is happening. Keep all clears the whole list.
Nothing reaches your customer until you confirm it. PoolHelm writes the message — it names the reason, either the thunderstorm risk or the official warning — and you send it. When the weather clears, PoolHelm can send a follow-up saying service is back on. If the storm moves off a stop before you’ve decided, the row clears itself and Today shows a one-line note that it did.
A skipped stop still gets serviced: weather skips carry over to that tech’s next working day. Your techs see the same storm on their own route and can skip an unsafe stop themselves; that lands on your Today page as a message from them. Telling the customer stays with you.
Your controls, under Settings → AI Preferences
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| When should PoolHelm ask you about a stop? | Off, or “Alert me — I’ll decide.” There is no third option that reschedules for you. |
| Email customers on weather skips | On, Skip & Notify emails the customer straight away. Off, a weather skip is internal and you tell them yourself. |
| Send me a test weather email | Sends the exact template a customer would get to your login address. Nothing reaches a customer. |
There is no rain-chance setting to tune. The storm bar is fixed so that every PoolHelm owner gets the same, rare, real alert.
See also: “A customer wants fewer emails” and “What happens when a stop doesn’t get done?”