What are Alerts?
Alerts are designed to draw your attention to important updates, such as being added to a Channel, receiving an urgent message, or being @mentioned in a conversation. In this article, we will walk through how to send, receive, dismiss and respond to alerts, including urgent messages and @mentions. Let’s get started.
Receiving, Dismissing, and Responding to Alerts
The Alerts menu can be found on the top right menu bar, marked by the bell icon.
When you receive an alert or multiple alerts, a counter will appear on the bell icon letting you know how many alerts you have awaiting your attention.
To open an alert, click on the bell icon at the top of the right menu bar. This will open the Alerts menu bar, which lists all of the alerts awaiting your attention and previously acknowledged alerts. Click Go To on an individual alert to open the full message. Here, you may respond to the alert in the same way you would to any regular message.
To dismiss an alert, either click on Acknowledge on the bottom right of a new alert in the Alerts menu or select Acknowledge All, to dismiss all alerts.
Sending Alerts via Urgent Messages
Sending a message as urgent triggers both a Toast and an Alert to the recipient.
A Toast is a real-time pop-up that overlays the recipient’s message screen, bringing immediate attention to the urgent message while the user is active in Workstorm. The toast gives the recipient an option to see the urgent message within the context of the conversation by clicking on Go to Channel or they can select Dismiss. Alerts, on the other hand, appear more persistently yet passively in the left menu.
To send an urgent message, instead of pressing Enter on your keyboard, click the warning icon inside the message box. This will send the message marked as urgent, instead of sending the message as normal. Once sent, the recipient will receive an Alert in his/her left menu and a Toast, calling attention to the urgent message.
Sending Alerts via @mentions
Hyperlinking a member’s name in a message using an @mention is another way to trigger an Alert. Members often use @mentions in Channel conversations to help draw the attention of specific Channel members to a particular task, question or instruction.
To @mention a member, type @ followed by the first few letters of the member’s name. A dropdown list of members will appear above your cursor. Select the member from the dropdown list and his/her name will be replaced by a hyperlinked @mention. Then, send the message as normal.
Once the message has been sent, the @mentioned member will receive an Alert, in addition to receiving the message as normal under his/her Messages section in the left menu.
Alerting Members added to a Channel
Another way to trigger an Alert is by adding members to a Channel. Each newly added Channel member will automatically receive an Alert that he/she has been added to the Channel. For more information on creating Channels and adding Channel members, check out our article on Channel Messaging.
Overall, Alerts call a member’s attention to urgent or important updates, questions or tasks awaiting their attention. Depending on your type of work, organizational culture, interpersonal relationships and other factors, you may use Alerts consistently, irregularly or not at all. Similar to all other Workstorm features, the use of Alerts is optional and customizable to suit your collaboration needs.