Notifications & Inbox
Watching, @mentions, assignment, status and due-date notifications in one place.
The Inbox gathers everything relevant to you: tasks assigned to you, @mentions, changes on items you watch, status changes, upcoming due dates, and approval requests.
- Watch a task or docs page. Get notified on changes
- Mention someone by typing @user in a comment
- Mark a notification read, or mark them all read in one click
- Clicking a notification takes you straight to the task, page or board
Which events create a notification
There are fifteen notification types and the table lists every one. For each type the in-app (bell) and email switches are turned on and off separately.
| Notification | When it arrives |
|---|---|
| Task assigned to you | You became the assignee of a task. |
| Your name was set in a task field | You were added to a person-type custom field (Reviewer, Tester, Requester). The notification carries the FIELD NAME; saying "you were assigned" would mislead, since the assignee is a different field. It only goes to a newly added person. |
| You were mentioned | A comment mentioned you or a group you belong to with @. Both task and page comments. |
| A task you watch got a comment | There is a new comment on a task you watch. |
| A page you watch got a comment | There is a new comment on a docs page you watch. |
| A page you watch was updated | The content of a docs page you watch changed. |
| A task changed status | A task you watch, are assigned to or reported moved to another status. |
| Due tomorrow | A task is due tomorrow. Custom date fields marked "treat as a deadline" are reported separately too. |
| Overdue | The date has passed and the task is still open. |
| Added to a board | You were added to a board as a member. |
| Invited to a review | You were invited as a participant to a formal review. |
| Review reminder | The deadline of a review you joined is approaching and you have not commented yet. |
| Review changed stage | The process moved to its next step (from collecting comments to disposition, for example). |
| Your approval is due | An approval chain is waiting for your decision. |
| Your approval request was decided | The approval you requested was approved or rejected. |
On a status change the notification goes to the task’s watchers, assignees and reporter. Whoever made the change is not notified about their own action. Due-date warnings are sent once per task; the same reminder does not repeat every morning.
Mentioning a group
You can mention a group in a comment with @team-name: every member of the group who has access to that board gets a notification. Each group gets a mention handle derived from its name ("Product Team" → @product-team); typing @ suggests groups alongside people. In large groups everyone gets the in-app notification, while email is capped at 25 recipients to avoid flooding inboxes.
Notification preferences
Each user decides under Settings → Notifications how they want to be notified. Every type has two independent switches: in-app (the bell) and email. You can, for example, keep status changes in the bell but turn their emails off, or the other way round. Email is only sent in installations where you connected your own mail server (SMTP).
Account emails such as password reset and invites are independent of these preferences and are always sent. A user cannot turn off their password reset email.
In installations without email sending the product works fully: notifications stay in-app, invite links are shared from the screen, and an administrator resets passwords. See Installation (self-host) for SMTP settings.
Email notifications
The product works fully without email; in that case notifications appear only in the in-app bell. If you configure your own SMTP server, assignments, mentions, comments, status changes, due dates and approvals are emailed too. Each user decides under Settings > Notifications which events arrive in the bell and which by email; transactional messages such as password reset and invitations are not subject to those preferences.
Due-date reminders are sent by a job that runs once a day and has to be scheduled during installation (see Installation). Without it every other notification still works; only due-date reminders are never sent.
You become a watcher automatically when a task is assigned to you or an item you follow changes; you can unwatch any time. Watching requires no permission: adding yourself to the watchers is not editing the task, it is your own notification preference. If a person-type custom field has "the person here watches the task" turned on, whoever is named in it joins the watchers as well and starts receiving status and due-date notifications; they appear in the list and can remove themselves.