Notifications, reminders and following

Two different things reach you through the bell in the top bar. Notifications arrive on their own, because something happened. Reminders arrive only because you asked for one.

Notifications

The bell collects what the app has to tell you: items assigned to you, tickets a public form sent to a team you belong to, answers from the sender of such a ticket when it is assigned to you or you follow it (The sender of request … answered), mentions of your name in a comment, changes and deletions on items you Follow, configuration changes and, for administrators, new users and password-reset requests. The badge counts the unread ones.

• Clicking an entry that has a link marks it read and takes you to the item.
• The panel opens on Unread when you have any and on All when you do not.
• The icon on each entry says what kind it is; it is coloured while the entry is unread and grey once you have read it.
• Mark all as read clears the badge without deleting anything.
• Mute pop-up notifications stops the toasts appearing in the corner. The bell keeps filling normally; only the pop-ups stop. The setting is yours and is remembered.
• My notifications, reminders and following, at the bottom of the panel, opens a full page with everything side by side: your notifications, every reminder you may see — the ones you set, the ones aimed at you, and team reminders for teams you belong to — and everything you follow. Each reminder shows the item it is on (click it to open the item), when it fires — or when it was sent, cancelled or skipped, and why — who it notifies, and who set it.

That page adds one thing the panel does not offer: Delete all notifications, which empties the list in one go. It is permanent — a deleted notification cannot be brought back — and it deletes only your copy; nobody else's notifications are touched. Hover one of your pending reminders to cancel it; the alarm-off button in that card's header cancels every pending reminder you set, on every item. Reminders somebody else set carry no cancel button — the row names who set them, so ask that person.

Everything you follow

Following, under the reminders, lists every item you asked to be told about, newest first, with the date you started following it. Click an item's name to open it.

You start following an item from the item itself: the bell button in its header, Get notified when this item changes. On this page the bell is the way out again — it stops the notifications for that item and drops it from the list. Nothing else changes: unfollowing removes no notification you have already received, and you can follow the item again from its header whenever you like.

An item you followed and somebody has since deleted stays on the list as (item no longer available), so you can clear it.

When your installation sends email, some kinds you have not seen also reach your inbox a while later — a couple of hours unless your installation uses a different delay: an assignment, a mention, a reminder, a change to an item you follow, and (for administrators) a user's first sign-in. Reading the notification, or simply being active in the app, cancels that email.

You can stop these emails for yourself under Email notifications in My profile; the Email notifications: on link above the list on My notifications, reminders and following opens it, and so does Turn off these emails at the foot of every notification email. When your workspace's administrators have turned the emails off for everyone, the link on the page is not shown.

The deletion of an item you follow is the exception: it reaches the bell only, never your inbox, because the item is already gone and the email would have nothing to link to.

Reminders

Nothing reminds you about a work item unless you set a reminder. A due date that comes and goes, an item nobody has started, a phase running late — none of that produces a message on its own. Dates are for planning; a reminder is a separate decision you make when you actually want to be told.

Setting one

Open a work item — in the detail panel on the list, or in the editor — and click the alarm clock button in its header. The panel lists the reminders already on the item and the form for a new one.

Choose when it should reach you:

The first three are offered only when the item already has that date saved — a date you have typed but not saved yet does not count. At a specific date and time is always available, even on an item with no dates at all.

A day begins and runs out in the workspace's time zone, set in Regional settings. If an administrator changes it, reminders tied to a date move with it; a reminder at a specific date and time stays put.

The rest of the form:

• Only if the item has not been started — the reminder is dropped if the item has moved past Draft or Open by the time it is due to fire. This is checked when the reminder fires, not when you set it, so getting on with the work quietly cancels the nagging. It is on by default for reminders tied to a date, off for a fixed date and time.
• Notify — yourself, or one of your teams, in which case everyone in the team at the moment it fires gets it. Only teams that may work the item are offered: an item restricted to a designated team offers that team and no other, and an item restricted to you alone offers no team at all. A team that a project above the item shuts out is refused when you save.
• Note — up to 500 characters, delivered with the reminder. Useful for the thing you will have forgotten by then.

You can set as many reminders as you like on the same item.

A reminder arrives in the bell like any other notification — and, if you are away when it fires, by email too, on the same delay rule described above. Being away is the case reminders exist for, so they are not silent when you are not looking.

Reading the list

The list is yours, not the item's: you see the reminders you set, reminders aimed at you, and team reminders for teams you belong to. Another user's personal reminders on the same item are never shown to you — nor yours to them. A reminder someone else set for your team says who set it.

Each reminder shows when it is due and, underneath, what became of it:

• An alarm icon means it is still pending.
• Sent means it fired and is in your notifications.
• Cancelled means somebody removed it before it fired.
• Skipped, with the reason, means it came due but did not apply — most often the item was already under way (you had ticked "only if not started"), or the date it was set against was removed.

A skipped reminder and its reason are the answer to "why did nothing arrive?", which is why they stay on the list instead of disappearing.

Cancelling them

The ✕ cancels one pending reminder. It appears only on reminders you set — a team reminder somebody else set names who set it and carries no ✕, so ask them. Cancel all, at the top of the panel, cancels every pending reminder you set on this item after asking you to confirm; reminders other people set are left alone, and so is anything that already fired.

Cancelling is final — a cancelled reminder cannot be brought back. Set a new one instead.

When the item's dates move

A reminder tied to a date follows that date. Move the due date and the reminder moves with it; change the start date and reminders anchored to the start move too, including on the items below when the change cascades down.

• Clearing the date a reminder hangs off cancels the reminder, with the date it was set against was removed as the reason. Putting the date back does not bring the reminder back — set it again.
• If a date moves into the past, the reminder is not lost: it fires on the next check, a minute or so later.
• Deleting the item stops its reminders: each one is skipped when its moment arrives, with the item was deleted as the reason.
• Restricting the item, or a project above it, so that the person or team a reminder is for can no longer see it stops that reminder too: it is skipped with whoever it was for can no longer see the item as the reason.

Reminders live on the item, not on your screen, so signing out or working elsewhere changes nothing.