# Basic Concepts

Source: https://supernotify.rhizomatics.org.uk/latest/quick_start/basic_concepts/

## How It Fits Together

One notification from an automation can turn into several different notifications, each one shaped for the way it's sent.

Reading the picture from left to right:

1. **Who to notify** - the [targets](#target). People are turned into the ways they can be reached, using their [recipient](#recipient) details
1. **Delivery** - the [deliveries](#delivery) that apply are chosen, by default or because you asked for them
1. **Notifications** - each delivery picks out the targets it can use, and sends a notification suited to it, so an e-mail can have a full HTML layout and pictures, while the kitchen speaker gets a short spoken message

Three words cover almost everything in a UI-only setup.

## Target

A target is **who or what gets notified**: a person, a phone, a speaker, an e-mail address, or an area, floor or label that stands for several devices.

Leave targets out, and the notification goes to everyone.

## Recipient

A recipient is **a person, as Supernotify knows them**: their phones and tablets, and optionally an e-mail address and phone number. Recipients are found automatically from the *Person* entities in Home Assistant.

A recipient is not a different kind of target. A person is one of the things a target can be, and the recipient is where Supernotify looks up how to reach them. That is why `person.joe_mctest` works as a target, and you don't need Joe's e-mail address in every automation.

## Delivery

A delivery is **one way of sending a notification**, with a name, like `mobile_push`, `email` or `alexa_devices_announce_all`. Supernotify creates deliveries for whatever it finds in your Home Assistant, and they are what appears in the **Delivery** box of the `supernotify.notify` action.

Leave deliveries out, and Supernotify uses the ones that can work out for themselves where to send, like mobile push and e-mail.

## Priority

Priority is **how urgent a notification is**, on five levels: `minimum`, `low`, `medium`, `high` and `critical`. It is optional, and `medium` if not given. Priority is passed on to the phones, e-mail programs and other things that understand it.

## Two More, for Later

These come up throughout the documentation, and neither is needed to get started.

- A **Transport** is the technical means behind a delivery, usually a Home Assistant integration such as mobile app, SMTP or Alexa Devices. A delivery is a transport plus the settings to use with it, so one transport can have several deliveries, such as a plain `email` and an `html_email`.
- A **Scenario** is a package of settings with a name, which changes which deliveries are used and how they behave, for example quieter at night. Scenarios are set up in YAML.

[Advanced Concepts](https://supernotify.rhizomatics.org.uk/latest/quick_start/advanced_concepts/index.md) covers both, and the rest of what YAML configuration can do.