Your Inbox

Your Inbox opens from the button beside your name at the bottom of the sidebar, or, on a phone, from the button at the right of the top bar. It holds three things, and all of them belong to you personally: what needs you (join requests you can review and CRM tasks assigned to you), your direct messages, and your notifications.

It is worth being clear about what the Inbox is not. It is not a shared team inbox. There is no queue for a teammate to claim, no assigning, no internal notes, and nothing here is visible to anyone else on your staff. If what you want is incoming text messages that your whole team can pick up and reply to, that is a different tool -- see SMS outreach. If you want a conversation your team reads together, use Channels.

The count on the button

The number on the Inbox button is what is waiting for you in this workspace:

• your unread direct messages,
• your unread notifications here,
• the join requests you can review here, and
• your open CRM tasks here that are due today or overdue.

A task due next week does not hold the count up; it still shows in the Inbox. The count stops at "99+" on the button, and screen readers hear the full number. On your personal home, the count is your unread direct messages and the notifications that belong to no organization.

Opening the Inbox

Select the button and the Inbox opens beside the sidebar. Close it with the close button, with Escape, or by clicking anywhere outside it. It also closes when you go somewhere from it, such as the page a notification is about. A conversation is different: it opens inside the Inbox, so you can reply without leaving the page you are on.

Across the top:

• This workspace and All workspaces choose what you see. The Inbox opens on this workspace, matching the count; All workspaces gathers every organization you belong to, and names each item's organization. On your personal home, the Inbox always shows all of them.
• All, Needs you, Messages and Mentions narrow the list, each with its count.
• The double-check button marks your notifications read, for the scope you are looking at.
• The expand button, two arrows pointing apart, expands the Inbox over the page.

Notification settings at the bottom opens the Notifications tab of your profile.

The expanded Inbox

Expand the Inbox and it grows to fill the window beside the sidebar. The page you were on fades out behind it and waits where you left it: nothing on it can be selected until you close the Inbox, and nothing you were doing there is lost. The sidebar stays in use, and choosing somewhere in it closes the Inbox and takes you there.

The list is on the left, with the same choices across the top, and whatever you select from it opens on the right: a conversation, a join request, a task, or a notification. The list marks which one is open. With nothing selected, the right side greets you and shows the newest of what is waiting, such as a join request, your newest unread message and your newest mention, each with Open.

The collapse button, two arrows pointing together, returns the Inbox to its place beside the sidebar, and an open conversation goes with it. Close it with the close button or Escape.

Your browser's back button steps back the way you came: from the expanded Inbox to the Inbox beside the sidebar, and from something you opened to what was open before. Reloading the page keeps the expanded Inbox open on the same item.

When the window is narrow, as on a tablet held upright, the expanded Inbox shows one side at a time: the list, then whatever you open, with a back arrow at the top that returns you to the list.

On a phone

On a phone, the Inbox button sits at the right of the top bar, and the Inbox opens full screen. It shows one thing at a time: the list first, then whatever you open, with a back arrow at the top. Your phone's back gesture steps back the same way, and the close button returns you to the page you were on.

Links to your Inbox

A link to your Inbox, such as the one in an email or a push notification about a direct message, opens the Inbox over your home page, on the conversation it is about. Inside the app, the places that offer to message someone, such as Send DM on a member in People and Message on a connection, open the Inbox on that conversation over the page you are on, and so does choosing the Inbox in search.

Needs you

Join requests you can review show the person's name, when they asked, and their message if they left one. Approve lets them in. Deny asks once more before declining. In the Inbox beside the sidebar, select the request itself to open your organization's Requests page, where you can add a reason when you decline. You see requests if you can open that page: owners, admins, and teammates whose role can invite members.

Your CRM tasks show the task, who it is about, and when it is due, in red when it is overdue. Mark done completes it; in the Inbox beside the sidebar, select the task to open the contact it belongs to. You see tasks assigned to you in workspaces where you can open the CRM's tasks.

Volunteer debriefs assigned to you show here too, in any workspace where you are on the team, even if you cannot open the CRM's tasks: "Debrief with {first name} after {shift}" and when it is due. They have Log debrief instead of Mark done: it opens the debrief page, and logging the call completes the task. See Volunteer debriefs.

In the expanded Inbox and on a phone, selecting a request or a task opens it instead, with the same actions: a request with the person's message, Approve, Deny and All requests; a task with when it is due, who it is about, its priority, Mark done and Open contact.

An item leaves the list as soon as you act on it. If the change does not go through, it comes back with a message saying so.

What shows up in Mentions and updates

Notifications are how OrganizeOS tells you something happened: a new member joined, someone RSVP'd, a donation came in, somebody mentioned you in a channel, a meeting or training is coming up, a connection request arrived, or an engagement alert fired. Mentions come first, then everything else, newest first. Events, discussions, new members, donations and email each get their own icon; everything else shows a bell.

Join requests are not listed here, because they are under Needs you, and new direct messages are counted under Messages rather than here, so nothing is counted twice.

The Inbox lists your 20 most recent notifications. There is no search, no archive, and no way to page further back -- once something falls past the twenty most recent it is no longer reachable from here. If a notification matters, act on it while it is there.

The list keeps itself up to date while the tab is open, and checks again whenever you open the Inbox or come back to the window.

Reading and clearing

Unread notifications are tinted, bold, and carry a dot.

• Select a row to open whatever it is about. That also marks it read. In the expanded Inbox and on a phone, the notification opens first, marked read, with Open to go to what it is about.
• Some notifications have nothing to open. Selecting one of those simply marks it read in place.
• Hover a row and use the check button to mark it read without going anywhere.
• Mark all read clears every unread notification in the scope you are looking at, in one go.

If a list cannot load, the Inbox says so and offers to try again, rather than pretending you are caught up.

These notifications are for this organization

In a workspace, the Inbox shows this organization's notifications and the ones that belong to no organization, such as connection requests. It never shows another organization's. Switch to All workspaces to see every organization's at once.

Your direct messages behave differently, and the difference trips people up, so it is worth stating plainly: messages are not scoped to an organization. They follow you everywhere.

Direct messages

Messages lists every conversation you have, with the other person's name, a preview of the last message, and when it arrived. Your own last message is prefixed with "You:". A dot marks a conversation with something new from the other person.

Selecting a conversation opens it inside the Inbox, and marks it read. Beside the sidebar, it takes the list's place and the back arrow returns you to the list; the expand button gives it more room, and the conversation stays open as the Inbox grows. In the expanded Inbox, a conversation opens on the right.

Your conversations are yours, not the organization's. The same threads appear whichever workspace you are in and on your personal home, and a conversation with someone does not end when either of you leaves an organization. For the member-side view of the same messages, see Direct messages.

You can only message people you are connected with

This is the most common dead end, so it deserves its own heading.

Starting a conversation means choosing New message under Messages and picking someone from your connections. Sharing an organization with someone is not enough on its own -- you have to be connected first. If you try to message a member you are not connected with, you will be asked to connect before the conversation can start, and the member's page in People offers a connect action for exactly this reason. Share your connect link, or find the person by their handle.

For the same reason, someone who has blocked you and someone who has simply never connected with you look identical from your side. Either way the answer is to connect first.

When you are connected with someone, the Message button on their public profile opens your conversation with them in the Inbox, over your home page. If the two of you have not talked yet, the Inbox offers Start conversation, and nothing is created until you select it. If you are not connected after all, it says "You can message people you're connected with" and links to your connections.

Inside a conversation

A direct message works much like a channel, in one-to-one form. You can:

• Send messages with attachments.
• React to a message, and reply in a thread.
• See read receipts and a typing indicator.
• Edit or delete your own messages. An edited message is marked, and a deleted one leaves a short placeholder rather than vanishing silently.
• Pin messages, and open the pinned panel from the header.
• Search within the conversation from the header.
• Set a notification level for that one conversation.

In the Inbox, search, pinned messages, the notification level and settings sit under the ... button in the conversation's header. Threads and those panels open over the conversation; close them to return to it.

The settings control in the header also covers message retention. When a conversation has a retention window set, a banner says how long messages are kept before they delete themselves, and notes that pinned messages are exempt. See Message retention.

The members panel and the channel intro block you may know from Channels do not appear in a direct message -- there are only ever two of you.

Changing what you are notified about

Notification settings at the bottom of the Inbox opens the Notifications tab of your profile, outside this workspace. That is the right place for it: the choices there are yours across every organization you belong to, not per-workspace. See Notification preferences for what you can turn on and off.

There is no separate per-organization notification setting. If you want less of something, change it once on your profile and it applies everywhere.

Why this matters

A lot of organizing runs on people noticing things in time -- a join request that has been sitting for three days, a mention in a channel you do not check, a call you promised to make today. The Inbox is where those land for you specifically, which is also why it does not work as a team queue: two organizers looking at their own Inboxes are looking at two different lists. Knowing that, and knowing that the notifications list keeps only the most recent twenty, is the difference between using it as a working surface and assuming it is an archive that will still hold last month's notification when you go looking for it.