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The Notification Center is a feature that provides users with updates on community activity. Users can receive notifications via email or in-app for events such as mentions, replies, and new posts. etc.

For events that currently trigger email notifications, Notifications will also be displayed near real-time in the in-app notification center. Users can view and access their notifications from the top-right corner of the screen and can either engage with or mark them as read.

 

Notification types supported in the notification center:

  • Mentions
  • Replies
  • New topic in a subscribed Category/Group
  • Approval joining groups
  • Invitations to groups
  • Private messages
  • Right answer

The notification status can be one of the following:

  • Unread: New notifications are marked as unread. They change to read status when clicked/opened, or when "Mark all as read" is clicked.
  • New: The New section shows all recent unread notifications.
  • Seen: Notifications are marked as seen when the notification bell icon is clicked. This also clears the read counter in red color for New notifications. The seen status doesn't indicate that the notification itself was clicked or opened.

Who has access to the Notification Center:

  • All users that are logged into the community have access

Key Points:

  • The Notification Center in In-app is available for all the logged in community users and cannot be disabled.This feature aligns with common UX patterns and user expectations, as notification centers are prevalent in many software tools.
  • The email notification functionality will remain intact; in-app notifications will be an additional channel for receiving updates.
  • Email notification and in-app notifications are two separate channels of notification read/unread state of the notification item of either of these channels will not be in sync.
  • All notifications are displayed in chronological order with the recent one on top of the list.
  • When clicking an item in the notification center list, the user is redirected to the respective page.
  • When clicking on the mark all as read. All the notifications displayed are marked as read.
  • Notifications are shown from the past 30 days.

 

Comparing Email and In-app notifications.

Features

Email Notification

In-App

System Notification

System Activity ( user registration, activation , moderation..etc)

Yes

No

Customization 

Turn ON/ OFF types of notification from profile settings page

Yes

No ( Future release )

Modify Phrases text

Yes

Yes

Notification Types

Mentions

Yes

Yes

New Replies

Yes

Yes

Notification for a new topic in a subscribed category/product

Yes

Yes

Notification for approval joining groups

Yes

Yes

Invitations to groups

Yes

Yes

Private messages

Yes

Yes
  Right answer Yes Yes

 


 

Customization

The texts used in the notification center can be modified using the phrases customization option available in the control and destination. Below are the phrases and default value used 

Module : Forum

Key

Default value

Variables

notification.center.information.notifications

Notifications

 

notification.center.information.noActivity

You don’t have any activity yet.

 

notification.center.information.comeBack

Please come back later.

 

notification.center.markAllRead

Mark all as read

 

notification.center.information.new

NEW

 

notification.center.information.recent

RECENT

 

notification.center.information.theEnd

You've reached the end of all notifications from the past 30 days.

 

notification.center.information.markAsRead

Mark as read

 

notification.center.information.markAsUnread

Mark as unread

 

notification.center.messages.mention

<span>{username}</span> mentioned you in <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span>
  • username- name of User who mentioned you
  • title- topic where you were mentioned

notification.center.messages.newReply

<span>{username}</span> replied to <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span>
  • username- name of User who left new reply
  • title- topic where new reply was left

notification.center.messages.newTopic

<span>{username}</span> posted a new topic <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span> in the category <span>{categoryName}</span>
  • username- name of User who posted a new topic
  • title- title of newly posted topic
  • categoryName- title of Category where topic was posted

notification.center.messages.newProductUpdate

<span>{username}</span> posted a new product update <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span>
  • username- name of User who posted a new product update
  • title- title of newly posted product update

notification.center.messages.topicAnswered

A comment in <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span> has been marked as the best answer
  • title- title of the topic where best answer was marked

notification.center.messages.privateMessage

<span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{username}</span> sent you a private message
  • username- name of User who sent you a private message

notification.center.messages.groupInvitation

<span>{username}</span> has invited you to join the group <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span>
  • username- name of User who invited you to the group
  • title- title of the group where you were invited

notification.center.messages.groupJoinApproval

Your request to join the group <span class="notification-center__item__description__link">{title}</span> has been approved
  • title- title of the group where your join request was approved

​@deepan Thanks for this. It helps clear things up quite a bit. 

Multiple items above lead me to understand this as saying, when a user opts-out from email notifications for an activity (ex. new topic), they will still see In-app notifications for that activity. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)

And one additional question: Can you please clarify a bit more about these settings for the In-App NC? 

Reply settings for System Email Notifications
  • Does the In-App NC leverage this setting at all?
    • From this question during the beta, it seems that’s only specific to emails: 

    •  

  • If no, does it notify of all replies on a topic? Or does it only notify on the first new reply since the user last visited or viewed the topic?
    • Edit: Looking at my own NC, it seems that it’s every reply. 

As others read this, I wanted to drop a few ideas here to consider voting for: 

 

I notice that there’s not a phrase related to events. Does that mean new events do not generate notifications for those following the events calendar? 

​@deepan Thanks for this. It helps clear things up quite a bit. 

Multiple items above lead me to understand this as saying, when a user opts-out from email notifications for an activity (ex. new topic), they will still see In-app notifications for that activity. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)

And one additional question: Can you please clarify a bit more about these settings for the In-App NC? 

Reply settings for System Email Notifications
  • Does the In-App NC leverage this setting at all?
    • From this question during the beta, it seems that’s only specific to emails: 

    •  

  • If no, does it notify of all replies on a topic? Or does it only notify on the first new reply since the user last visited or viewed the topic?
    • Edit: Looking at my own NC, it seems that it’s every reply. 

Thanks ​@DannyPancratz . Currently the notification settings to opt in/out for a specify type of notification activity is only valid for email based notification and does not apply for In-app NC. Thanks for suggestions and we are reviewing this feature request to enable such settings also to in-app based on feedback. 

As others read this, I wanted to drop a few ideas here to consider voting for: 

 

Thanks bringing these Ideas

Based on what I’m seeing in my Notification Center, this is incomplete or out-of-date due to additional developments:

Notification types supported in the notification center:

  • Mentions
  • Replies
  • New topic in a subscribed Category/Group
  • Approval joining groups
  • Invitations to groups
  • Private messages

 

I’m seeing multiple notifications about marked answers: 

 

screenshot from my NC on my community

 

Based on what I’m seeing in my Notification Center, this is incomplete or out-of-date due to additional developments:

Notification types supported in the notification center:

  • Mentions
  • Replies
  • New topic in a subscribed Category/Group
  • Approval joining groups
  • Invitations to groups
  • Private messages

 

I’m seeing multiple notifications about marked answers: 

 

screenshot from my NC on my community

 

Thanks, Yes we have pushed this notification type. I will update in the docs

EDIT: Found this! It was hover text, if you want to mark certain notification as a unread.

 

What is this, where is this button/link?

notification.center.information.markAsUnread

Mark as unread

I remember when this was just an Idea and a design concept! It’s great to see it finally come to life, even if a bit premature and buggy at first. But it’s still good to see that I’ve got an in-app tool for this now!

For me, the one thing that’d be nice to have is a way of having “urgent” stuff prioritised to the top of my list - such as private messages - so that they don’t get lost in a sea of notifications if someone jams up the forum with spam.

But otherwise, I’m liking what I’m seeing so far!

I hope it's okay to share feedback from our community here. Please let me know if it would be better to submit this as an idea.

Synchronization of notification counts between email and in-app notifications:
Dheepak G already said: "Currently, we do not plan to synchronize the counts. However, we appreciate your input and will consider this for future improvements to the Notification Center."
We still hope and wish for this to be implemented.

First reply since the last visit 
I sincerely hope that you will adjust the Notification Center so that not every reply within a topic triggers a notification, but only the first reply since the last visit to that topic (just as with e-mail notifications). 
An example:


For those last two replies, no email notification is sent, we believe the Notification Center should function the same way. For our superusers, this results in an overload of notifications in the Notification Center.
 

Notifications in notificationcentre automatically marked as read
Additionally, would it be possible for notifications to be automatically marked as read once the topic has been visited. Will this be a possibility in the future?

First reply since the last visit 
I sincerely hope that you will adjust the Notification Center so that not every reply within a topic triggers a notification, but only the first reply since the last visit to that topic (just as with e-mail notifications). 

 

I disagree with this somewhat. My ideal is to allow the same setting as with email notifications if/when user settings are added for the notification center. 

Email Notification settings for Replies

Or the ideal, IMO, is probably closer to what you see on social platforms like Linkedin, a notification that rolls up the many to let you know that many people have replied. That signals to me that a conversation is happening and I should go check it out, while avoiding the many notifications in the the NC. 

Example from Linkedin

 

I agree with your suggestions, ​@DannyPancratz; the key is to inform users of important activities without causing overload.

Or the ideal, IMO, is probably closer to what you see on social platforms like Linkedin, a notification that rolls up the many to let you know that many people have replied. That signals to me that a conversation is happening and I should go check it out, while avoiding the many notifications in the the NC. 

Example from Linkedin

 

Please vote:

 

Reply


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