¶ Notifications & Reminders
Planally keeps you informed so you never miss important updates. Notifications alert you automatically when something changes that involves you. The Notification Center gives you a full history, Email Notification Preferences let you decide what reaches your inbox, and Reminders gathers everything that needs your attention into one place.
¶ Why This Matters
Staying informed ensures:
- Visibility: Know when you're assigned a project, role, or activity.
- Timeliness: Get alerts before deadlines and when they're missed.
- Governance: Stay on top of endorsements, approvals, and access requests.
¶ How Notifications Work
Notifications are delivered in two ways:
- In-App: Every notification appears in Planally, in the notifications panel and the Notification Center.
- Email: Notifications are also sent to your registered email address, depending on your Email Notification Preferences.
Emails about assignments, requests, and approvals are sent individually within a minute or so. Other updates (activity, project, and deadline emails) are gathered into a single summary email about every 30 minutes, so they can arrive a little after the in-app notification.
¶ Types of Notifications
- Access Notifications: Account or licence actions (e.g. access granted, password reset).
- Action-Based Notifications: Project and activity updates (e.g. role assigned, activity status changed, file uploaded).
- Time-Based / Deadline & Status: Scheduled dates (e.g. a planned start or end date is 3 days away, or has passed).
¶ Viewing Notifications
Click the bell icon at the bottom of the side menu to open the notifications panel, which shows your latest 10 notifications grouped by day. From there, open any notification to jump to the related page, or click Notification Center for the full view.
A red number on the bell shows how many notifications have arrived since you last opened the panel or the Notification Center. Opening either one clears the number. Notifications stay unread until you mark them as read.
¶ Notification Center
The Notification Center lists all your notifications with Message, Status (Read / Unread), Category (Request, Assignment, Deadline & Status, Approval, or General), Workflow, and Created Date & Time.
- Open a notification to go to the related page.
- Select one or more notifications to Mark as read, Mark as unread, or Delete.
- Search to find a specific notification.
- Notification history is available for up to 3 months.
¶ Email Notification Preferences
Choose which notifications also reach your email inbox. These settings control email only: every notification still appears in Planally.
¶ Steps
- Open the Notification Center.
- Click the gear icon at the top right. The Email Notification Preferences panel opens.
- Pick a starting point from the dropdown:
- All Enabled: every email is on.
- All Disabled: every email is off.
- Default (Recommended): the emails most people need are on, and the noisier updates are off (see the table below).
- Switch individual emails on or off. If your choices don't match a preset, the dropdown shows Custom.
- Click Save.
¶ What each group covers
| Group | What it's for | Emails in the group | On by Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assignments | When you're given or removed from a project, role, or activity | Access Granted, Access Revoked, Role Assigned, Role Removed, Activity Assigned, Activity Unassigned | All |
| Requests | When someone needs your action | Access Request, Endorsement / Approval Request, Endorsement / Approval No Longer Required | All |
| Approvals | When your own requests are decided | Access Requests Approved, Access Requests Rejected, Endorsement / Approval Requests Approved, Endorsement / Approval Requests Rejected | All |
| Activity | Activities where you're the assignee | New File Attachments, Activity Detail Updates, Activity Status Updates, Upcoming Deadlines, Missed Deadlines, Date Changes, Item Updates, Activity Closed | All except Activity Detail Updates and Date Changes |
| Project | Projects you're a member of | Status & Phase Updates, Project Information, Activities Added, Activities Status Updates, Upcoming Activity Deadlines, Missed Activity Deadlines, Activity Date Changes, Activities Deleted, Project Deleted | Status & Phase Updates and Project Information only |
- Upcoming Deadlines emails arrive 3 days before a planned start or end date.
- Item Updates covers rows in an activity's tables being assigned, unassigned, updated, or deleted.
- Account emails, such as welcome, sign-up confirmation, password reset, and licence emails, are always sent and can't be switched off.
¶ Reminders
The Reminders page is your personal action hub. It gathers everything that needs your attention across your workflows into one place, organised into three tabs. Open it from the Reminders (clock) icon at the bottom of the side menu.
¶ Late Activities
Activities that have passed their planned dates. Columns: Activity, Project, Status (e.g. In Progress – Late, Planned – Late), Planned Start Date, Planned End Date, and Workflow.
¶ Pending Approvals
Activities awaiting your endorsement or approval. Columns: Activity, Project, Status (Pending Endorsement / Pending Approval), Requested Date & Time, and Workflow.
¶ Pending Access Requests
Access requests awaiting action. Columns: Username, Email, License (Licensed / Unlicensed), Project, Status (Pending Access), Workflow, and Requested Date & Time.
Each tab is searchable and paginated; click any row to open the related activity, project, or request.
¶ Weekly reminder emails
Planally also emails you a weekly summary of these three lists every Monday. To choose which lists are included:
- Open Reminders.
- Click the gear icon. The Reminder Preferences panel opens.
- Switch Late Activities, Pending Approvals, and Pending Access Requests on or off. All three are on unless you change them.
¶ Best Practices
- Check Reminders daily: Late Activities and Pending Approvals are your priority queue.
- Act promptly on endorsement and approval requests to keep workflows moving.
- Start from Default (Recommended) and adjust only what you need. Switching everything off means you rely on the bell for deadlines.
- Use the Notification Center to catch up on anything you missed (up to 3 months back).