Glossary
Introduction
In this section, you’ll find a list of key terms, their definitions and various concepts associated with Novu. Familiarising yourself with these will help you understand and use Novu better. They will help you navigate our docs more effectively and utilise Novu to its maximum potential.
If you have any questions or need further clarification on any of the terms listed above, please feel free to reach out to our support team or join our community!
List of key terms and definitions
1. Notification:
A brief message or alert that informs users about events, updates, or some other information
2. Channels:
Novu lets you send notifications across different communication mediums, including emails, in-app messages, push notifications, SMS, and chat. Each of these five communication mediums is referred to as a notification ‘channel’.

Channels in Novu
3. Providers:
Providers are responsible for handling message delivery across various channels. Novu currently supports multiple notification channels, each with its own set of providers.
- Chat: This channel offers three providers:
- Discord
- MS Teams
- Slack
- Email: The Email channel features fourteen providers, including:
- Sendgrid
- Amazon SES
- Sendinblue
- Resend
- SparkPost
- Postmark
- Mailjet
- Mailersend
- Outlook 365 (based on a custom SMTP server)
- Mailgun
- Mandrill
- Netcore
- Inforbip, and
- Custom SMTP
- SMS: The SMS channel includes 10 providers in total:
- Twilio SMS
- SMS77
- Africa’s Talking
- Infobip
- Nexmo
- Plivo
- Sendchamp
- AWS SNS
- Telnyx
- Termii
- Push Notification Providers: This channel includes four providers:
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
- Expo Push
- Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)
- One Signal
- In-app Notification Center: Novu provides you with a set of APIs and components to create rich customized notification center experiences:
- React component
- Angular component
- Vue component
- Web component
- iFrame embed
- Custom styling
- Headless notification center
4. Subscribers:
Subscribers are entities designated to receive the notifications you send. Each subscriber in Novu is uniquely identified by their subscriberId
.
5. Workflow:
Workflow templates define the flow of messages sent to subscribers.
6. Topics:
Topics facilitate bulk notifications to multiple subscribers simultaneously, streamlining communication.
7. Digest Engine:
The digest engine aggregates multiple trigger events into a single message, ensuring efficient communication.
8. Delay Actions:
Delay actions introduce time intervals between workflow steps, optimizing message delivery timing.
9. Step Filter:
Step filters customize workflow by specifying notification criteria, enhancing communication efficiency.
10. Organizations:
Organizations allow separation of notifications across multiple products, managed through the Novu web dashboard.

Organizations in Novu
11. Environments:
Novu runs all your requests in the context of an environment. By default, Novu creates two environments when your account was created, development
and production
.
Development environment
: The development environment is used for testing purposes and validating notification changes prior to committing them to the production environment.Production environment
: It will be your live/production environment, you cannot make changes to this environment directly. You will first have to make the changes in thedevelopment
environment and then promote it toproduction
. This is a read-only environment.
12. Data associated with an environment:
- Subscribers (can’t be promoted to production)
- Workflows (can be promoted to production)
- Messages
- Execution logs
- Connected integrations (can’t be promoted to production)
- Notification feeds (can be promoted to production)
- Brand-related assets and settings
13. Team members:
Members of a team have access to the Novu web dashboard. This allows you to have individuals work on and manage templates and notifications.
14. Layouts:
Layouts are HTML design or structure to wrap content of email notifications. Layouts can be manipulated and assigned to new or existing workflows within the Novu platform, allowing users to create, manage, and assign these layouts to workflows, so they can be reused to structure the appearance of notifications sent through the platform.
15. Blog Posts / Articles:
- 🪄✨Building a blog with a liking feature using React, Hanko and Novu 🔥
- How to add In-App notifications to any web app!
- How To Add In-App Notifications To Your Angular App
- Creating A Hot New Food Delivery App with Novu
16. Videos:
- How to add In-App Notifications to your Web app with Novu
- Subscriber (User) Management & Bulk Import Guide
- Workflow Optimization with Delay Actions
- Workflow Optimization with Delay Actions
17. Office Hours:
- Office Hours - 0.17.0v Pre-Release
- Office Hours - 0.15.0v Pre-Release
- Office Hours - 0.14.0v Release
- Office Hours - 0.14.0v Pre-Release
18. External Resources
- Simplify configuration managements with Novu and Configu
- Vercel and Novu integration
- Novu is building open-source notification infrastructure for developers
- Novu - An open-source notification infrastructure for developers
- Novu Tackles Notification Infrastructure Management
- Novu: Omni-channel notification infrastructure for developers
Was this page helpful?