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Implementation guide
The DirectToEmployees Implementation Guide
This guide takes a company from an empty Hub to its first workday notice: what belongs in the channel, the audiences to create, a communication-only import, starting by email, who sends what, and the norms that keep people reading.
Written for the operations, HR, internal communications or IT person who will run the Hub, at a company with one site, thirty sites, or no site at all.
1. Decide what belongs in this channel
DirectToEmployees is for the notices that change someone's working day: a site that won't open, a delayed start or early release, a different reporting location or entrance, an updated schedule, a site safety instruction, a system that's down. It also carries the regular notices people need on time: a benefits window closing, a policy's effective date, a training date, a company meeting.
It isn't for everything. Keep day-to-day conversation in your chat tool, documents and long-form updates in email or the intranet, and records in the systems that keep them.
- It isn't an emergency notification system and replaces none of your emergency procedures or required notices.
- It isn't a security alert tool.
- It isn't a place for anything about one employee's pay, health, leave, performance or status.
2. Create the Hub
Sign in at /hub/signin/ with an email code, a passkey or a Blasts sign-in, and walk through onboarding. Setting up a Hub is free; sending uses prepaid credits, which can come from any legitimate source.
Set the timezone
So a 6:30 a.m. notice goes out at 6:30 a.m. where your people are.
Root the account in a company mailbox
Use a mailbox on your own domain, not a personal address, so the account survives people coming and going.
Check the defaults
A new company Hub starts with leader approval off and the weekly email digest on Monday at 09:00. Change either in Settings.
3. Create assignment audiences
An audience is a list of people a notice can go to, and every notice goes to exactly one audience. Create one for each part of the company you actually notify, named the way people say it, and set it to company assigns so employees never pick it themselves.
- Sites: North Yard, Eastgate Depot, Central Office.
- Shifts and crews: Night Shift, Field Services.
- Teams and departments: Customer Support, Finance.
- Groups: Managers & Supervisors, New Team Members.
- Combinations you send to often: Eastgate Night Shift. DirectToEmployees never combines Eastgate and Night Shift at the moment you send, so a combination you need is its own audience.
Filing an audience inside another keeps a long list tidy. It never changes who a notice reaches: a notice goes to the people in the audience you pick.
4. Prepare a communication-only import
Your import file needs three columns: the email address, the name, and an audiences column naming audiences you already created. That's all the Hub keeps from a company import. Every other column is dropped before anything is saved, and the import preview shows those columns as not stored.
That's a narrow import rule, not a scan for sensitive information. Don't upload a full HR export: build a file for this channel.
- Include only the employees who agreed to receive your notices.
- Leave out pay, employee or government ID numbers, Social Security numbers, leave, medical, performance, discipline, background, immigration, timeclock and termination information.
- Leave out birthdays and hire dates too; the Hub doesn't use them, and the preferences page doesn't ask for them.
- A department or team column doesn't fill an audience. Use the audiences column, or assign people in the Hub.
5. Bring employees in
Upload the file on Employees, confirm the people on it agreed to hear from your company, and review the preview before anything happens.
- Everyone on the file becomes an email subscriber and can receive from your first notice.
- One new person at a time can come through the inbound webhook from an onboarding form, with the same three fields.
- Adding a single address by hand sends that person an invitation instead of subscribing them.
- Invitations are spread out at up to 200 a day.
6. Start email-first
Send your first notices to people receiving by email. Nothing has to be installed, and nobody has to do anything before they can receive. Email goes out from your company's own sending address, and every new Hub includes 50 email credits.
An attached file reaches people on Blasts only. For people receiving by email, link to the document instead.
7. Explain the Blasts connection and the same-address rule
Employees who use Blasts can connect with your company by entering your enrollment code in the app, which sends you a connection request; accept it, or turn on auto-accept. When the connection uses the same email address your company has for them, their notices move to Blasts on their own.
Tell employees to connect with the address your company has for them. A connection with a different address is a separate person in the Hub: it isn't in the audiences the first address is in, and the first address keeps receiving by email. Don't count on the Hub to join the two: nothing moves the audiences across, and an address still receiving by email and an address connected on Blasts can both receive the same notice. Assign the audiences to the address that's connected and remove the one that isn't used.
Connecting on Blasts is always the employee's choice, on a device they choose. Nothing in this guide should become a requirement to install anything.
8. Define who sends to which audiences
Invite the people who send, each signing in as themselves, and give each exactly the audiences they should reach.
- Owner and admins: every audience, the team and settings. Usually operations leadership, HR or internal communications.
- Site or Department Lead: sends to, and reads replies from, only the audiences you grant. Usually site leads, shift leads and department managers.
- Viewer: reads along without sending.
- A send to All Employees asks the sender for a passkey confirmation. Changing roles, Content Series, Journeys, Event Campaigns and recurring notices don't ask, so decide carefully who may create them.
- There's no built-in HR, safety or security role: grant a safety lead the audiences they send to, like anyone else.
9. Set norms for workday notices
The channel stays useful when every notice is worth reading.
- Say what changed, who it affects, what to do, and where the authoritative schedule or instruction lives.
- Send to the smallest audience a change concerns. Keep All Employees for what genuinely concerns everyone.
- Point to the system of record rather than copying from it: 'your updated start time is in the scheduling system'.
- Respect employee time: send outside working hours only when a change genuinely affects the next work period.
- Don't use it to fill or claim shifts. Tell people extra shifts are available and where to claim them.
- If you ask a YES or NO question, ask one at a time: replies count against your most recent YES or NO notice. A reply isn't an acknowledgement, a sign-off or a completion record.
- Save the notices you send often, like a closure or a delayed start, as templates.
10. Use optional interests separately
Some notices are for people who want them rather than people assigned to them. A new company Hub starts with Company Events, which employees turn on or off on their preferences page. You can create others the same way, like Extra Shifts or Wellness, set to employees choose.
Never make an assignment optional. A site, a shift, a crew, managers or New Team Members should always be set to company assigns, or employees could add or remove themselves.
11. Set up New Team Member Welcome (Hub Pro)
New Team Member Welcome is a Journey: five notes on days 0, 2, 7, 14 and 30. It runs on your New Team Members audience and starts for each person when someone at your company adds them to it. The Hub can't see a hire date or a start date, so adding the person is what starts it.
- Day 0: who sends notices here and what the channel is for.
- Day 2: how a workday change will reach them.
- Day 7: where the schedule, pay, benefits and time-off systems are.
- Day 14: the optional notices they can choose.
- Day 30: their own controls, including what STOP does.
It's a welcome, not HR onboarding, and finishing it records nothing. Journeys are part of Hub Pro, which unlocks at $500 in cumulative Blast Credit purchases.
12. Set up Planned Site Shutdown (Hub Pro)
Planned Site Shutdown is an Event Campaign: six notices around one date, sent to the audience for the affected site. If the date moves, change it once and every unsent notice moves with it.
- Two weeks out: the shutdown, the site and the date.
- One week out: where to report instead, and where each person checks their own assignment.
- Two days out: a reminder.
- The day before: tomorrow's reporting instruction.
- The morning of: the site is closed today.
- The day after: the next reporting instruction.
Write the real reporting instructions, and name your scheduling system or the person who is the authority on each assignment. The Hub doesn't know who reported, and this isn't an emergency workflow.
13. Keep authoritative records in existing systems
Your HRIS keeps who is employed; your scheduling system keeps the schedule; payroll, benefits, timekeeping and training systems keep what they keep. DirectToEmployees connects to none of them and doesn't know an employee's schedule, site, department, status or dates.
- When someone's assignment changes, move them between audiences in the Hub.
- When someone leaves, remove them from the Hub; nothing in your HR system reaches it.
- When an employee replies STOP, they're opted out and removed from every audience, including assigned ones. If they reply START later, messages resume, but you have to add them back to their audiences.
14. Respect employee privacy and personal devices
DirectToEmployees is a notice channel, not an employee record, and the rollout should say so.
- Tell employees what the channel is for, that receiving by email needs nothing installed, and that connecting on Blasts is their choice.
- Tell them the company doesn't see their location, their device or their notification settings, and that no notice is a record of whether they read it.
- Keep staff notes in the Hub to what the communication needs. Never record pay, health, leave, performance, discipline, background or immigration information there.
This guide describes how the channel is built and meant to be used. It makes no legal or regulatory compliance claim; check your own obligations with your counsel.
15. Test before rollout
Before anyone depends on the channel, make sure it works the way you'll use it.
Send a test to yourself
Use Send a test to me from the composer for each template you plan to use.
Send one low-stakes notice
Something useful but routine, to one audience, so the first notice people get isn't a closure.
Check your audiences
Look at who is in each assignment audience before a real closure depends on it.
Rehearse with the senders
Walk each lead through sending to their own audience, and whoever sends to All Employees through the passkey confirmation.
The first thirty days
One person can run this, and most of the calendar is getting audiences right before anything important goes out.
Day 1 Set up the Hub and create the audiences
Sign in, set the timezone, and create the assignment audiences you send to, set to company assigns.
Week 1 Build the file and invite the senders
Prepare the communication-only file, import it, and invite operations, site and department leads and HR with their own audiences.
Week 2 Announce it and send one test
Tell employees what the channel is for, that email needs nothing installed and that Blasts is their choice. Send one low-stakes notice.
Week 3 Send real workday notices
Let leads send their own site and shift notices. Share the enrollment code for anyone who wants Blasts.
Week 4 Review and set the rhythm
Check audiences, save templates for closures and delayed starts, and set up Hub Pro sequences if you have them.
What DirectToEmployees does and doesn't do
- Sends a typed or formatted notice, with links and images, to the one audience you pick.
- Delivers by email to employees on your opted-in list, with nothing installed, and on Blasts to employees who connect with the same email address.
- Keeps only the email address, the name and named audiences from a company import.
- Sends now, schedules for later, repeats weekly, and runs Content Series, Journeys and Event Campaigns.
- Lets each sender reach only the audiences they're granted, and puts replies in one-to-one conversations.
- Connect to an HRIS, payroll, scheduling, workforce-management, timeclock, benefits, learning, directory, Teams or Slack system.
- Know an employee's schedule, site, department, status, hire date or start date, or move anyone between audiences on its own.
- Combine or exclude audiences in one notice.
- Track location, monitor devices, or record who read anything.
- Hold, fill or assign shifts, or record an acknowledgement or a completion.
- Send SMS.
- Send attached files by email: an attached file reaches people on Blasts only.
- Replace your emergency procedures or any notice your company is required to give.
No legal or regulatory compliance claim is made here.
Ready when you are
Setting up a Hub is free. Create the audiences your company works in, prepare a communication-only file, and send your first workday notice by email.
Product facts on this page reflect published Blasts.app information as of September 24, 2026.