Your inbox

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.

Clicking Inbox slides a narrow panel in from the right, over whatever you are working on; the page underneath stays where it is. Each row shows a dot while it is unread, the notice, and how long ago it arrived. Clicking a row marks it read and opens what it is about, closing the panel. For most notices that is the record the notice is about: a document, a register or a risk. The exception is a notice that says a review awaits you — a request or a reminder: those open your My work page, where the decision is made under Waiting on you; the outcome notices (approved, changes requested) still open the record. A notice about something with no page of its own is only marked read.

When the notice is about something inside a record, the row lands on that thing, not just the page: a notice about an action on a risk opens that action's panel, and a mention opens the record whose conversation you were named in — a register's notice opens the register, where its one Comments panel holds the remark. (Notices sent before registers moved to one conversation per register still open at the row they pointed to.)

The tick at the top of the panel, 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

An Owner publishing their own draft directly is not told about it, because they are the one who did it.

Comments

Mentions work the same way everywhere you can comment — on a document, a risk, an action, or a register. The notice names the thing the comment is on and quotes the opening of the remark, as plain text.

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

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.

A record no longer has an assignee of its own, so there is no longer a Risk assigned to you notice and no switch for one. Notices of that kind were removed from every inbox, rather than left sitting there pointing at a field you can no longer see. Work on a risk is handed over one action at a time now, and Action assigned to you is the notice that says so.

Registers

The two automation notices concern standing instructions set up before automations left the register's own page; they keep running and keep telling the same people. See Registers.

Reviews

Every review names the person who decides it, and that is who is told — once, with the record's name, landing on their My work page, under Waiting on you. Other Owners of the team hear nothing, because the decision is not theirs. Submitting to yourself writes no notice at all: you know you just asked, and the review is already on your list.

The round trip closes both ways on every record kind: asking for a review tells the approver, and the decision tells the submitter — with the note when changes were requested. A reminder repeats none of that; it simply says the work is still waiting, names the record, and deliberately names no sender: a nudge is about the work, not the nudger.

Billing

Until this existed, the first sign a workspace had spent its AI allowance was work being refused. The usage meter on Settings → Billing had always shown it, but only to someone who happened to open that screen.

It goes to owners and admins rather than to whoever spent it, because the AI allowance is a shared workspace pool with no per-user limit: one person running a large batch can use the month for everybody, and the people who then lose their allowance are usually not the ones who can add capacity.

It arrives once per month at most. Crossing 80%, dropping back and crossing again does not send it a second time; the next monthly reset arms it again.

Choosing what reaches you

Settings → Notifications has one switch per area: Documents, Reviews, Risks and actions, Registers, Evidence, Long-running work and Billing. Everything is on until you turn it off — if you have never opened that screen, you are receiving all of it.

A switch covers every notice in its area: turning off Risks and actions stops an action was assigned to you and its due date moved alike. One switch per area keeps the screen to seven choices instead of twenty.

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 Documents does not remove a document waiting on your approval 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.