Your inbox
What Alchex tells you about, where those notices arrive, and what it deliberately stays quiet about.
Inbox sits at the top of the sidebar, with a count of everything you have not read. It is where Alchex tells you that something needs you — a review waiting on your decision, a colleague who named you in a comment, work that has just become yours.
The two places a notice appears
A notice arrives in two forms, and they are the same notice:
- A toast, bottom right, for something that arrives while you are working. It fades after a few seconds. If it is worth opening, it carries a link straight to the record.
- A row in your Inbox, which keeps it until you read it.
Opening the Inbox gives you a list on the left and the notice you are reading on the right. Clicking a row reads it in place — it does not take you anywhere. Only the explicit Open button navigates, and it goes to the record the notice is about: a document, a register, or a risk. Some notices have no page to open, and those simply have no button.
Mark all read clears the ones currently in the list.
How current the count is
A new notice reaches you within about half a minute, and immediately if you switch back to the tab — Alchex checks when the window regains focus rather than making you wait out the interval.
The number beside Inbox counts every unread notice you have, not just the ones on screen, so it keeps counting past the length of the list. It drops the moment you read something rather than at the next check, and it is the same number wherever you see it.
What reaches you
Everything below is delivered in the app; there is no email. Each one can be switched off individually — see Choosing what reaches you.
Documents
| Notice | Who gets it |
|---|---|
| Approval requested | The Owners of the document's team, minus whoever submitted it |
| Approved and published | The person who submitted the review — with the version it published as |
| Changes requested | The person who submitted the review, with the reason |
An Owner publishing their own draft directly is not told about it, because they are the one who did it.
Comments
| Notice | Who gets it |
|---|---|
| You were mentioned | Anyone named with @, minus the author |
Mentions work the same way everywhere you can comment — on a document, a risk, an action, a register record or a control. The notice names the thing the comment is on and quotes the opening of the remark.
An ordinary reply on a thread you are part of does not notify anyone. Naming someone is how you actually reach them. See Comments.
Risks and their actions
| Notice | Who gets it |
|---|---|
| Risk assigned to you | The new assignee |
| You now own a risk | The new owner |
| Action assigned to you | The new assignee |
| Action due date changed | The action's current assignee |
These fire whether the work is handed over on an existing record or given to someone at the moment the record is created. Assigning something to yourself tells you nothing, and un-assigning tells the previous holder nothing — "this is no longer yours" is not work. See Risk records and Actions and activity.
Registers
| Notice | Who gets it |
|---|---|
| Form response received | The register's owner, or whoever opened the public link |
| An automation told you something | Whoever the automation names |
| An automation failed | Whoever turned it on, then the register's owner |
See Registers and Automations.
Long-running work
| Notice | Who gets it |
|---|---|
| Audit finished | Whoever started the run |
| Audit did not finish | Whoever started the run, with the reason |
A review of a document runs clause by clause and can take a while, so it is built to survive you closing the tab — and now it tells you when it is done rather than leaving you to check. The failure notice matters most when the run was abandoned entirely, because nothing else would ever mention it. See AI review.
Choosing what reaches you
Settings → Notifications has one switch per notification, grouped by area. Everything is on until you turn it off — if you have never opened that screen, you are receiving all of it.
The switches are per notification rather than per area on purpose. "Risks" as a single switch could not separate a risk was assigned to you from its due date moved: one is the most useful notice in the group and the other is the one you are most likely to want to stop, so a single control would cost you something either way.
Three things to know:
- The settings are yours alone. Nobody else in the workspace can change what reaches you, and you cannot change what reaches them.
- Turning something off stops it arriving at all — it is not hidden or collected elsewhere. Notices you switched off while they were on stay in your inbox; only new ones stop.
- It applies to the notice, not the underlying work. Muting a document is waiting on your approval does not remove it from your review queue; the document still needs deciding.
What Alchex deliberately does not tell you about
Silence here is a decision, not an omission:
- Every reply on a thread. Mentions are deliberate — somebody chose to reach you — and replies are not, so a busy review would bury everything else. Now that each notice can be switched off individually this is a candidate to add; until it is, naming someone is how you reach them.
- A chat answer finishing. You are watching it arrive.
- Your own actions. Nothing you do notifies you.
Notices are not emailed — the switches above control what arrives in the app. Read notices stay in your Inbox rather than being cleared out after a period.