Inbox and Notifications
The Inbox collects what needs you: invitations, mentions, task deadlines, low stock, and account alerts. Open it from the sidebar, or press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + O. A badge on the sidebar entry counts what's unread.
What's In It
The inbox is grouped by kind, and a group with nothing in it doesn't appear at all:
| Group | What lands there |
|---|---|
| Team Invitations | Someone invited you to their team, with Accept and Decline on the row |
| Project Additions | You were added to a project inside a team you're already on |
| Tasks | A task assigned to you, a deadline approaching or missed, a scheduled start coming up |
| Usage Alerts | Your team's compute usage is running low |
| Plan Status | A subscription ended or a payment failed, with a link to export your data |
| Inventory Alerts | An item with a reorder point hit it or ran out |
| Mentions | Someone @ mentioned you — in a note, in a task's description, in a comment on any record with an activity thread, or in the note attached to a sign-off |
The toggle at the top switches between Unread and All, and the chip beside it narrows to one team or project when several are competing for your attention.
Reading, Clearing, and Dismissing
Read and dismissed are different states, and the difference is useful.
Marking something read takes it out of the Unread view but leaves it in All, so an invitation you've seen but haven't decided on doesn't disappear. Dismiss removes it for good.
Mark all as read clears the badge. Dismiss all, in the ⋯ menu, empties the list but deliberately leaves invitations alone, since accidentally clearing an invitation would mean asking someone to send it again.
Reviews and Sign-offs
Asking someone to review a notebook page, a figure, a protocol run, or a data table notifies them, and the request appears on the item itself, in its Activity panel, where the reply belongs. That's where you'll find what's waiting on you and where you approve or ask for changes.
Choosing What Reaches You
Settings → Notifications is a grid: a row per category, a column per channel. The ⋯ menu inside the inbox opens the same screen.
Categories are grouped the way the app is:
- Plans: approvals waiting on you, task assigned, deadline approaching, scheduled time approaching, deadline missed
- Comments: mentions
- Teams & projects: team invitations, project additions
- Inventory & orders: inventory alerts, orders you follow
- Facility: instrument scheduling, which covers a reminder before your session, a heads-up when downtime cancels a booking, notices posted on instruments you've booked, and overdue service alerts
- Billing: usage alerts and plan status
- Security: sign-ins and account changes
Channels are in-app and email, with push as a third inside the app. Open the Inbox on your phone and you'll be asked whether to allow notifications; say yes and Conspecta can reach you on the lock screen even when it's closed. You can also turn it on later from Settings, under Notifications. Turning it back off is done in your phone's own settings, not here, which is why there's no switch for it in Conspecta.
By default, everything arrives in-app and nothing arrives by email. Plan status is the exception, and it's inverted: it emails you and stays out of the inbox, because a failed payment needs to reach you even if you haven't opened Conspecta in a fortnight.
Security notices are always emailed and can't be turned off. A sign-in you didn't make is exactly the message that shouldn't be silenceable.
Tip: Turning off a category's in-app toggle removes it from the inbox entirely, not just its badge. If something you expected never arrived, check this grid before assuming it wasn't sent.
Following Things
Some notifications come from following rather than from a preference. Open an order and use its bell to follow it, and you'll hear when its status or details change. The Orders list can filter to just the ones you follow, and unfollow several at once.
On Your Phone
On a narrow screen, Inbox is one of the four tabs along the bottom, with the same groups and the same actions. Enabling notifications on the device adds the push column to the settings grid.