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Platform Settings
Required permission:
settings.write(Super Admin effectively)
Platform Settings controls global configuration that affects all users on the platform.
Changes here are immediate and platform-wide. All changes are recorded in the audit log.
General Settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Platform name | Displayed in emails and the UI — default: "NotariseIt" |
| Support email | The reply-to address on all platform emails |
| Default from name | The sender name on platform emails |
Session Settings
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Default session duration (minutes) | The pre-filled session length shown to notaries when setting availability. Notaries can override per slot. |
| Maximum witnesses per session | Platform-wide cap on witness participants. Default: 2. |
| Video provider | The active video conferencing provider. Switchable here at runtime — no code change or redeploy required. The selected provider takes effect within 60 seconds. Ensure the required API credentials for the chosen provider are configured in environment variables before switching. |
| Session reconnect grace period (seconds) | How long a dropped participant has to rejoin before the session is marked as a no-show / expired. Default: 900 seconds (15 minutes). |
| Enforce recording before seal | When enabled (default: on), the notary cannot apply their notarial seal unless an active cloud recording has been detected for the session. If the recording fails to start — for example, due to a video provider outage — the platform logs this and an authorised admin override is required before the session can proceed. Disable only during confirmed provider outages and re-enable immediately after. |
| Enable transcription | When enabled, session recordings are transcribed and the transcript is stored with the audit record. Default: off. Transcription incurs additional per-minute provider costs and is intended for compliance or legal use only — leave off unless specifically required. |
| Void recording retention (days) | How long recordings from voided or incomplete sessions are kept in standard storage before deletion. Completed-session recordings follow the statutory minimum 6-year retention (Notaries Public Professional Practice Regulations 2026, Reg 14(3)) and are unaffected by this setting. |
| Notary reminder wait time (minutes) (Super Admin only) | How long a client waits before the platform shows a "Remind notary" button, letting the client send a one-time SMS nudge to the notary. Default: 5 minutes. Accepted range: 1–60. Must be set lower than the no-show wait time below. The reminder is a single SMS; once sent, the button is gone permanently. |
| Notary no-show wait time (minutes) (Super Admin only) | How long a client waits in the video room before the platform shows a "Find another notary" banner, allowing them to self-service request a reassignment. Default: 10 minutes. Accepted range: 1–120. Setting this too low risks releasing a notary who is merely slow to join; too high strands the client in a dead session. The no-show is only confirmed if there is no evidence the notary actually reached the room (no cloud recording row, no audit events from the notary, no signed fields, no seal applied). |
| Reassignment price tolerance (%) | How far from the booked price a replacement notary's own price may sit before the platform stops offering them the session. Default: 25%. Accepted range: 0–100, and values above 100 are clamped. See below. |
The reassignment price tolerance
When a notary comes off a confirmed booking, the platform looks for someone else to take it. The client's price never changes, and the replacement is paid what the original notary would have been — above or below their own usual rate. They are shown the figure before they commit and may hand the session back, and that consent is what makes the arrangement fair.
This setting decides who is worth asking. The platform re-prices the same documents at each candidate's own rates and only offers the session to those within this percentage of what the booking charges, in either direction.
It is a targeting rule, not a correctness guard, and the two failure modes pull against each other:
| Set too low | Set too high |
|---|---|
| Few candidates qualify. Bookings that somebody would happily have taken get refunded instead. | Notaries receive assignments far from their own rate, start ignoring the channel, and the sessions go unfilled anyway. |
The default is deliberately wide, because the cost of being too tight — a client refunded rather than served — is the outcome the whole mechanism exists to avoid.
Tuning it. Each reassignment search records how many candidates were in range, out of range, and unpriceable, so "would a wider band have saved this refund?" is answerable from the record rather than by guessing. A market with few notaries wants a wider band than a busy one. Ask engineering for the figures before moving it.
What the tolerance does not do
It never changes anybody's fee, and it never prevents a reassignment on its own: a booking the platform cannot price — an older booking with no itemised fee record, or a document type a candidate holds no rate for — is offered on availability alone. Refusing a candidate over missing data would mean refunding a client over missing data.
Recording retrieval
Session recordings are never visible to clients or notaries. Only admin, support, and compliance roles can generate a time-limited download link for a recording, and every retrieval is written to the audit log. Two link types are available: a short-lived portal link (default 15 minutes) for an immediate in-portal download, and a longer external link (default 24 hours, hard-capped at the 7-day signed-URL ceiling) to hand to an authorised requestor such as a lawyer or court. Link lifetimes are set by platform environment configuration.
Notification Settings
These toggles control which notification channels are active platform-wide. Turning off a channel here disables it for all users, regardless of their individual notification preferences.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Email notifications | Master toggle for all platform emails. Disabling this suppresses all transactional emails. Do not disable in production. |
| SMS notifications | Enables/disables SMS reminders platform-wide. Requires a valid Twilio account SID and auth token to be configured. |
| WhatsApp notifications | Enables/disables WhatsApp reminders. Requires WhatsApp-enabled Twilio number. |
| Voice call reminders | Enables pre-session voice call reminders (Pro+ notaries only). Requires Twilio voice credentials. |
| SMS provider credentials | Twilio Account SID and Auth Token fields — required before enabling SMS or voice. |
Enabling SMS/WhatsApp incurs Twilio costs per message
These are billed directly to your Twilio account per message sent. Ensure your Twilio account is funded and the credentials entered here are for your live Twilio account (not a test account) before enabling in production.
AI Settings
Controls the AI document review and Help Bot behaviour platform-wide.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Standard AI model | The model used for routine Help Bot queries and document summaries. |
| Deep review model | The higher-capability model used for detailed document analysis (available on Pro+). |
| Access-tier monthly deep review credits | How many deep (Tier 2) reviews an Access-plan notary can trigger per calendar month. Default: 5. Pro and above are unlimited. |
| In-session batch credit cost | Credits deducted when a notary triggers AI Review All inside a session, regardless of how many documents it covers. Default: 1. Minimum 1. |
Setting the Access allowance to 0
The field accepts 0, which silently makes deep review Pro-only for every Access notary on the platform. Nothing warns them in advance — the button simply never becomes available. The shipped default is 5, and the published subscriptions guide tells notaries they have a monthly allowance, so setting this to 0 makes that page wrong. If you need to disable it, raise a docs change alongside.
Deep review does not gate notarisation
AI review is advisory on every plan. Reducing or zeroing this allowance limits the deeper analysis a notary can run; it never prevents anyone from notarising a document.
Feature Flags
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
| User registration | Toggle to enable or disable new account sign-ups platform-wide. Disable during maintenance or capacity events. |
| Plan waitlist | When enabled, users on unsupported plans see a "Join Waitlist" option instead of an upgrade button. |
| Help Bot | Enable or disable the AI virtual assistant chat widget for all users. |
| Notary public search | Toggle public discoverability of notary profiles. Disable to hide the Find a Notary page without affecting existing bookings. |
Maintenance Mode
Maintenance mode is not controlled from this panel — it is managed at the infrastructure level via DigitalOcean App Platform.
To take the platform offline for maintenance:
- Log in to your DigitalOcean dashboard.
- Navigate to App Platform → ron-web-service → Settings.
- Scale the instance count to 0 or deploy a static maintenance page via a separate branch.
- Reverse the change when maintenance is complete.
Notify users before maintenance
Send a platform-wide email from Admin → Support → Broadcast before taking the site offline. Give at least 24 hours notice for planned maintenance windows.
Audit Log
All platform setting changes are recorded with:
- The admin who made the change
- The previous and new value
- Timestamp
Access the full audit log from Compliance → Audit Log.
The attendance fee
Separate from the notarisation fee, and the wording matters: it pays for a notary's attendance at a sitting, and it is the notary's money rather than a platform charge. It exists because a document signed by several people at different times takes several sittings of a notary's day.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Default attendance fee | Applied where no organisation overrides it |
| Ceiling | The highest an organisation or notary may set |
Zero is a legitimate value. An organisation setting it to nil is absorbing the cost for its clients, not misconfiguring the platform — do not treat a zero as an error to be corrected.
An organisation may override the default for its own notaries, up to the ceiling. An override above the ceiling is refused rather than clamped.
Do not describe it as a notarisation fee
Anywhere it is surfaced — settings, support replies, receipts — it is an attendance fee. The distinction reaches a regulator, and the phrase on the receipt is the one to reuse.