Notifications and the evening mail

Two channels for the same information: the bell, which says everything right away inside the screen, and the evening mail, a summary by e-mail once a day.

The bell

The Notifications button (a bell, at the top of every screen) carries a badge with the number of unread notifications — "Notifications (1)". With nothing new, it opens on: "Nothing new: invitations, replies, and moved milestones show up here." With something new, each line says who did what, on which schedule, and how long ago ("Anne replied under Foundations · Rénovation Atelier · just now"); the Mark all read button clears the badge without reopening each line.

Three families observed, as the screen itself announces them: invitations (someone invited you, or joined a schedule you own), replies (to a comment you posted), and moved milestones (an icon moved by another member or by a link's propagation).

The evening mail

Set from Settings › Preferences › Notifications, Evening email section: a checkbox, "The evening mail: a daily summary of what concerns you", checked by default. The text under the checkbox is explicit: "Sent at 6 PM, on days when something has been waiting for you for more than an hour — if the server has SMTP mail configured. The bell, on the other hand, says everything, right away."

Two conditions have to both hold, then, for you to receive this mail: having left it checked, and the instance having an SMTP server configured (a self-hosted instance with no SMTP will never send it — the bell stays the only reliable channel). The message groups notifications by schedule ("n new item(s) on name:"), one line per notification with a direct link, and ends with a reminder of how to stop it (a link to Preferences).

One mail per day at most, and each notification appears in it only once: what a mail has already said does not come back the next day, even if still unread. What your own assistant did (a token in your name) stays in the bell and never in your mail: it only writes to you about what others did.

What happens when you get it wrong

• The evening mail is cluttering your inbox: uncheck the box in Preferences — the bell keeps saying everything, without waiting for the evening.
• A notification read by mistake: reopening the screen doesn't bring it back — it's not a gesture that undoes, but it stays readable in the relevant schedule's History (see History and Compare).

What this page doesn't cover

• Changing your e-mail or your password: see Account and data.
• Inviting someone, which triggers an invitation notification: see Sharing and roles.
• Commenting and replying, the source of reply notifications: see Comment threads.