Notifications

Notifications keep the right people informed the moment something happens: a task assigned to you, a form submission, an overdue invoice, an @mention in a comment, an automation firing, an approval waiting on you, and more. They appear in-app on the bell (top-right) and, when email is configured, can also arrive by email.

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   Automatic across every module

   A universal event→notification bridge means new and existing actions notify the relevant owners, admins or assignees automatically. No wiring per feature. When a catalogued action occurs, everyone entitled to hear about it (per their preferences) is notified.

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   Work your inbox to zero

   Open Notifications (the bell ▸ View all) to archive one notification or clear the whole inbox, or snooze one until later (in an hour, this evening, tomorrow morning or next Monday - the clock on each row in the bell offers the same choices); a snoozed notification comes back as unread at that time. Archived ones stay under Archived. Several updates about the same record while you have not read the first one are folded into one row that says how many updates it holds, and read notifications are tidied away after 180 days. Urgent notifications are never folded.

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   Admins set the org policy

   In Settings ▸ Notifications (or Administration ▸ Notifications), owners/admins choose which notification types are required for everyone and which are optional. Required types are always on and locked for members.

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   Everyone tunes their own

   Each person switches their optional alerts on or off from Settings ▸ Your alerts, their user page (Notifications tab), or the bell ▸ Notification settings. All three are the same control and offer the same choices: which alerts you get, whether they also arrive by email (every notification, one daily digest, or none), and what hour the digest is sent. Required ones stay locked.

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   Three types that were being sent but never listed

   Watch alerts, Items assigned to you, and Escalations from your agents now appear in notification settings. The first two had been delivering for a while without being catalogued, which meant nobody could see them in the list or switch them off; both are optional and on by default. The third, Escalations from your agents, is required and cannot be switched off by anyone. It is sent only when an agent has already failed to deal with something it was watching, so a switch that silenced it would exist purely to hide the one message that means nothing and nobody is handling this.

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   The bell + deep links

   The bell shows a red count of unread notifications; open it to read them, mark all read, and click any one to jump straight to the task, lead, deal, file or record it refers to.

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   One badge, and it always shows the number

   Every "something needs you" mark in WorkBOS is the same badge, in the sidebar and in the top bar alike: a number, never a plain dot, capped at 99+ everywhere. The colour tells you what kind of attention it wants, red needs you, amber is coming up or is waiting on somebody else, green is running right now. When a menu section is collapsed, its badge adds up everything inside it and takes the most urgent colour underneath, so a pending approval never looks like somebody else’s open request. Screen readers hear the whole thing: "seven unread notifications", not "seven".

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   Turn the pages from either end

   Every list has Previous and Next at the top of the list as well as at the bottom. They are the same control - turning a page from the top is the same as turning it from the bottom - so on a hundred-row page you no longer scroll past rows you have already decided against just to reach page four.

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   A badge takes you to the thing it counted

   Clicking a badge lands you on the tab that holds the item, not on the page’s front door. The Phone row is the clearest case: it counts unheard voicemail, unread texts and calls nobody has looked at, so it opens Voicemail, Messages or Calls depending on which of those is waiting, voicemail first, because somebody spoke to a machine. If your plan does not include one of those tabs, it skips it rather than sending you to a page that cannot show it.

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    Red is reserved

    Inside a page, a tab only wears the red badge when its number is people waiting on you. A tab that is simply telling you how many records it holds, deals on a company, entries in a ledger, contacts in a directory, keeps a plain grey count. If everything is red then nothing is, so the one thing that needs you is the only thing wearing it.

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    Daily briefs for owners & admins

    Two admin-only digests run automatically. A once-a-day Morning Brief summarises what needs you, overdue invoices (with the amount to collect), expense claims and leave requests awaiting your approval, and is sent only when there is something to act on. Credential-rotation reminders alert you when a stored secret in the vault is due or overdue. Both are opt-out-able like any other notification. These briefs arrive on YOUR time zone, set it in Settings ▸ Your profile (new users auto-detect from the browser), with a workspace default time zone as the fallback, so a 7am brief means 7am where you are.

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    A calm inbox

    An update is emailed a few minutes after it happens (10 by default), not at once. If several arrive in that time you get one email listing them all, and anything you have already read or cleared in the app is not emailed at all. The same warning is emailed at most once a day, then less often while it keeps happening (two days, four days, then weekly); the bell still shows every one. The morning brief comes Monday to Friday unless you turn weekends on, and only on Mondays if you have not opened the app for two weeks. In Settings ▸ Your alerts ▸ Do not disturb you can pause notifications for an hour, until tomorrow morning or for a week, and set quiet hours: email that arrives in them waits and comes together when they end, and pop-ups in the app stay quiet (the bell still collects everything). Urgent alerts, security, sign-in and billing email are never held. Each kind of alert has three settings - App, Email and Push - so you can keep something in the bell without being emailed about it; Email can be Now (as it happens), Daily (listed in one summary email at your digest hour instead of one email each) or Off; billing notices and anything your admin makes required are always emailed. Push sends the alert to your phone or computer even when WorkBOS is closed: press Turn on for this browser under Push to this device (your browser asks permission then, never before), tick Push for the kinds you want, and use Send a test to check. Turn it on in each browser or device you use. On iPhone and iPad, add WorkBOS to your Home Screen first and turn it on from there. Pausing and quiet hours hold push too; urgent alerts still come through. When several alerts arrive at once they fold into one notification ("5 new alerts") that opens your Notifications, and while you have WorkBOS open in front of you a push arrives silently, because the pop-up in the app already shows it. Platform administrators set both numbers on Platform ▸ Email ▸ Limits (the wait, 0-120 minutes, and the gap before a warning repeats, 0-168 hours), which also shows how much email is waiting right now and how many emails the calm rules kept out of inboxes this week.

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    Dead addresses stop being emailed

    If an email is refused because the address does not exist, WorkBOS stops emailing that address (security mail such as password resets still goes). A full mailbox or a temporary problem is not a reason, and those addresses keep getting mail. Platform administrators see every address that is no longer emailed, and why, on Platform ▸ Email ▸ Delivery, and can allow one again there.

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    Stop a kind of email from the email itself

    Every non-essential email (notifications, digests, getting-started tips, product news) has an unsubscribe link in its footer, and Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook show their own one-click Unsubscribe beside the sender. From there you can stop that kind of email, stop all non-essential email, or pause it for 30 days, without signing in. Security and billing emails, and anything you asked for, such as a password reset or an invoice, always arrive.

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    If your workspace goes quiet

    When nobody has used a workspace for a couple of weeks, we send its owners and admins a short reminder, and it always names the specific thing waiting for them: three voicemails nobody has listened to, two approvals holding the team up, an invoice still sitting in draft, or a phone number that has never taken a call. If there is nothing specific waiting, we send nothing at all, because a reminder with no point to it is just another email. You get at most three of these, at least a fortnight apart, and they stop the moment somebody signs back in and picks up where they left off.