Preferences and channel inheritance

Global and workflow preferences combine to determine ordinary notification eligibility. Channel names depend on the operation, and critical workflow policy can bypass ordinary preference suppression.

Preference inheritance and critical workflows

Setting	Effect
Global channel preference	Applies across notification workflows.
Per-workflow channel preference	Further restricts that workflow. Ordinary delivery requires both levels to allow the channel.
global.enabled: false	Suppresses non-critical notifications under the preference policy.
Workflow critical: true	Can bypass ordinary preference suppression.
Explicit optional false	Preserves an opt-out where the field or map entry supports explicit presence.
Missing channel	Can mean unsupported or inherited; do not interpret every omission as an explicit opt-out.

A critical workflow does not guarantee provider delivery or replace recipient authorization and business eligibility. Explain critical-notification policy in the preference UI.

Preference update semantics

Operation	Update behavior
Update global preferences	Applies across workflows. Omitted channels retain their current values.
Update workflow preferences	Requires workflowId; omitted channels retain their values. Use the global operation for global changes.
Batch workflow preference update	Missing workflow IDs are skipped. Compare updatedCount with the number of submitted entries.

Send only the settings the user changed; these operations patch preferences rather than replacing the entire set.

Channel names across operations

API context	Channel vocabulary
Preference toggle keys	inApp, push, email, sms, chat
Registered channels	CHANNEL_* enum values
Activity filters	Provider strings such as in_app and push; see activity filter fields.

Use the vocabulary defined by each operation.