Everything the lab needs to tell you arrives in one place. This article covers reading them. For choosing which ones you get, see Your profile, timezone and notifications. Most of what arrives here is triggered by stock running down, so Update, consume, or adjust an item's quantity is the other half of the picture, and running low without anyone noticing is the problem the whole thing exists to solve.
The bell
The bell in the top bar carries a count of how many you have not read yet. Opening it shows your most recent notifications.
- Clicking one marks it read and takes you to whatever it is about.
- Mark all read clears the count without opening anything. The list stays where it is so you can still see what you just cleared.
- View All Notifications opens the full page.
New notifications appear in the bell as they arrive. You do not need to reload the page.
If the count cannot be worked out for some reason, the bell shows an exclamation mark rather than a number, so an unknown count never looks like zero.
The notifications page
View All Notifications, or the Notifications item in the sidebar, opens the full history.
Notifications are grouped by day, with Today and Yesterday named rather than dated. Within a day, several of the same kind collapse into a single line, so five low-stock alerts read as "5 items are running low" instead of filling the screen. Open the line to see them individually.
The chips along the top filter by category: All, Stock, Forecast, Expiry, Experiments, Team, Reports. The count underneath tells you how many of the total you are looking at.
Load more fetches the next batch. The list you were reading stays on screen while it loads.
How long they are kept
Notifications are kept for 30 days and then removed.
They are a list of things needing attention, not a permanent record. If you need the history of what happened to an item, that is the Audit Log, which keeps everything.
Summary emails
If you switched a category's Digest column on, those notifications are gathered up and sent as one email on your schedule instead of arriving one at a time.
The email groups items the same way the page does, and links back to the app. Every summary carries an unsubscribe link, which stops the summary emails and nothing else. Password resets, invites and anything else you actually need still reach you.
A period with nothing in it sends nothing.
Running-out forecasts
A running-out forecast is different from a low stock alert. Low stock tells you an item has fallen below a number you set. A forecast tells you how fast an item is being used and when it will reach zero, so it can warn you before the number is hit at all.
It says the rate in plain terms, for example that at roughly 12 mL a day the 40 mL on hand will last about three days.
A forecast is raised once, and then left alone for about a week so it does not nag. You hear about it again if it becomes urgent, or if it is still a problem once that week is up.
Becoming urgent reaches everyone, including anyone who had asked for quiet. Asking not to be nagged about a slow problem is not the same as asking to be kept in the dark when it turns into a fast one.
Two buttons sit on a forecast notification.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Quiet for me | Stops that alert reaching you for a few days. It silences it for you and nobody else. Your colleagues still get it. |
| Note for reorder | Tells your colleagues an order is coming. It does not silence anything, for anyone, including you. |
The difference matters when several people share an item.
Quiet for me is a request for quiet, and it only ever applies to the person who pressed it. Note for reorder is a message to the lab, not a request. If it also silenced the alert, the person who dealt with the problem would be the one who stops hearing about it, which is exactly backwards when the order never arrives.
Everyone who notes a reorder is recorded. The item shows how many people have, and opening it lists who and when. Once you have noted, the button reads Undo my note, and pressing it takes yours back. You cannot note on someone else's behalf, and you cannot remove their note.
If an item stops running low, its forecast goes away, and the buttons on any older notification about it will say the forecast is no longer active.