Notices & Recall Model
Notices & Recall Model
Every communication produced by the module is a notice. This page sets out the shape of a notice, how it is targeted, how its status is derived from its live window, and what has to be true before it can be published.
Notice Kinds
The kind chosen at the start of authoring determines which fields are required to publish and which wording is permitted. A product update cannot borrow recall language, and a recall cannot be published without at least one remedy on offer.
What a Recall Must Contain
Aligned to the GPSR recall-notice obligations (Reg. (EU) 2023/988, Arts. 35–37), a recall is only publishable once it carries:
- a clear consumer-facing title and summary that identify the product as subject to a safety recall
- the hazard — what is wrong with the product
- the consequence — the risk to the consumer
- the consumer action — what the consumer should do, including whether to stop using the product immediately
- one or more remedy options and, where relevant, remedy instructions
- a contact point (email or link) for affected consumers
- the affected products and, where relevant, the affected batches
- the markets the product was sold in
- at least one image of the affected product
These requirements are enforced at publication (see Publication Checks).
Targeting
A notice targets the units actually affected, following a product-first hierarchy:
A single notice can combine product-level and batch-level targets — for example, all units of one product together with two specific batches of another. Batches are chosen from the product’s own production batches by their real GS1 batch/lot code, so a recall can never reach units that were never part of an affected batch.
When a product target is added, the product’s identity — its name, brand, GTIN, SKU, and model — is captured on the notice at that moment. The notice keeps that record even if the underlying product catalogue is later edited, so what was recalled is preserved exactly as it was at the time.
Status & Live Window
Publishing is always a deliberate action by an authorised user. At publication the brand sets an optional live window: a start date (when the notice should begin showing to consumers) and an end date (when it should stop). Nothing runs on a timer to change the notice’s state.
A notice’s public status is derived from that window each time it is read:
Only a Live notice is shown to consumers. A notice can be published ahead of time with a future start date so it is fully prepared but does not appear to the public until its window opens.
Localisation
A notice is authored once in a base language and prepared for each language of the markets the affected products are sold in. Every language version passes the same language check as the base before the notice can be published. See Localisations Overview.
Automated translation of a recall into every target-market language is rolling out. Preparing each language manually is always available.
If the base content is edited after language versions have been prepared, the auto-prepared versions are marked as needing review so an out-of-date translation can never be shipped to consumers. Manually written versions are left as-is.
Publication Checks
Before a notice can be published, two gates must pass:
- Completeness — every required field for the notice’s kind is present (see What a Recall Must Contain).
- Language check — every language version has passed the wording check, which enforces compliant language and blocks prohibited or misleading terms.
If either gate fails, publication is blocked and the missing requirement is shown to the author. When a notice is published, an immutable record of its content at that moment is retained so the brand can later prove exactly what was published, when, and by whom.