Your day to day
Making alerts worth reading
Too many alerts is the same as none: people stop reading them.
The system can alert you about almost anything, and that is the problem. An inbox with forty alerts a day becomes noise within a week, and from that moment the one that mattered is lost too.
The rule
**Alert only on what you will act on that day.** Everything else gets looked at when it is time, not when it happens.
| Event | Alert? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Someone rejects a document | Yes | It needs you to do something |
| A case you were waiting on completes | Yes | It unblocks work |
| Something expires in 30 days | Yes | There is time to act |
| Someone opens a notice | No | It is information, not a task |
| The twenty-first document is delivered | No | It is reviewed together at the end |
Important
If an alert does not end in you doing something, it should not be an alert. It should be something you consult when you decide to look.
The two settings that change most
Watch out
Be careful turning them all off out of frustration. What usually follows is a missed expiry, then everything gets switched back on and the noise returns. The middle ground is what lasts.
Worth knowing
If you receive alerts about things that are not yours, the problem is not the alerts: it is permissions or how ownership is assigned.
›Can settings differ per module?
Yes, and they usually need to: a signature is not an upload.
›Can they arrive on another channel?
Ask, depending on what you have configured.
›Do I lose information if I turn them off?
No. Everything stays in its case; you only stop getting the nudge.
A real case
The situation
Someone receives 60 alerts a day and has stopped reading them.
What you do
- Keeps only rejections, completed cases and 30-day expiries
- Groups the rest into a daily digest
What you get
Drops to five or six a day, and starts opening them again.
The situation
Forty notifications arrive a day and the team has stopped opening them.
What you do
- Leaves on only those requiring an action
- Groups the informational ones into a digest
- Reviews at three months which are still ignored
What you get
A notification means again that there is something to do.
The situation
The notification goes to the whole team and nobody takes it on.
What you do
- Addresses each one to an owner
What you get
Somebody is on the hook.
The situation
The notification does not say what to do.
What you do
- Includes the specific action in the notice itself
What you get
You act without opening three screens.
The situation
Notifications go to an address nobody watches.
What you do
- Directs them to a monitored mailbox
What you get
The notification gets read.
The situation
An important notice is lost among twenty routine ones.
What you do
- Separates what requires action from what only informs
What you get
The important one stands out.
This article answers
- configure notifications
- i get too many alerts
- i miss the important things
- turn off notifications