Telegram notifications
Why bother joining
This is the channel a coach types into while standing on the hill:
- “Bus is 20 minutes out.”
- “Course is icy — bring the sharp pair.”
- “We’re off the hill early, pickup at 2.”
None of that is a calendar change, so it never becomes an event, an email or a push. It is the coach talking to you in the moment, and the channel is the only place it goes.
Two things that put people off, neither of which is true here:
It is not a group chat. The channel is read-only for parents. You cannot reply into it and neither can anyone else, so it never turns into forty people discussing carpools at 6am. If you need to reply to a coach, use the quick messages on your family page.
Nobody gets your number. Telegram channels do not show your phone number to the coach or to other parents. You join with a link; you are not adding anyone to your contacts.
You can also mute it and still read it whenever you like — see below.
The Telegram channel for your athlete’s calendar is another way to get notified — separate from the family-page push.
| Mechanism | What you get | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Family-page phone push | Buzz for ≤48h event changes (push API) | Lock screen via your browser |
| Telegram notifications | Buzz for every channel post (coach broadcasts, bot auto-posts) | Lock screen via the Telegram app |
| Email digest | Daily summary of all changes | Your email inbox at ~6pm |
You can use any combination. Most families end up using **phone push
- Telegram**, leaving email off, because the digest is redundant when push and Telegram are already firing.
Telegram setup
See Joining the Telegram channel.
Muting Telegram
If the channel gets too noisy, you can mute it without leaving:
- Open the channel in Telegram.
- Tap the channel name at the top.
- Notifications → set to off, 1 hour, 1 day, etc.
Your unread count still increments — you just don’t buzz.
Doesn’t Telegram duplicate my family-page push?
A little. For a coach-edit ≤48h event, you get:
- A phone push from the family page (via the Web Push API).
- A Telegram notification (via the Telegram app).
Two buzzes for the same change. If that bothers you, disable family-page push (Settings → Phone notifications → Disable on this device) and rely on Telegram alone. They’re roughly equivalent for ≤48h coverage; the family-page push has a slight advantage for events without a Telegram channel wired, but if your club has Telegram everywhere, they’re substitutes.