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Notifications in PrimeThink

PrimeThink uses a comprehensive notification system to keep you informed about important events, messages, and mentions. This document outlines how notifications work and how you can customize them to fit your preferences.

How Notifications Are Sent

Notifications in PrimeThink are delivered through multiple channels to ensure you receive timely updates:

Immediate Delivery

  • Push Notifications: Sent immediately to your registered devices (mobile and web) when a notification is created.
  • Real-time updates using WebSockets: Real-time updates are sent via WebSockets. This instantly updates badge counters and notification lists in the application.

Delayed Email Delivery

  • Email Digest: Unread notifications are batched and sent as an email digest after a short delay (typically 5 minutes). This gives you time to read notifications in the app before receiving an email. The delay counts from the first unread notification: notifications that arrive while a digest is waiting are added to it rather than postponing it. With the email setting on Mentions Only, the digest lists only your unread mentions, and no email is sent when there are none.
  • For Unread Messages: Similarly, unread chat messages can trigger email summaries based on your preferences.

The delay allows users who are actively using PrimeThink to see and dismiss notifications before email is sent, reducing unnecessary emails.

Where a Notification Appears

Most notifications belong to a single group, and you only see them while you are working inside that group. Notifications about a chat message, a mention, or anything else that happens in a group's conversations behave this way.

Being added to a chat, a workspace or a Live App is one of these. When another member adds you, you get a notification, with a push notification as well, telling you who added you and to what: "Name added you to chat", "Name added you to the workspace workspace", or "Name shared the live app app with you". Adding you to a workspace raises one notification for the workspace, not one for each of its chats, and you are not notified when you add yourself. When the notification is about a chat, opening that chat marks it as read.

A small number of notifications are system notifications instead. These belong to no group, so they appear no matter which group you are currently looking at. They are for things you need to see even when you are somewhere else entirely.

Being added to a group is one of these. If an administrator adds your existing account to another group, the membership takes effect immediately — there is no invitation to accept and no email to look for — so you get a system notification telling you which group you were added to, with a push notification as well. If you happen to be in the app when it arrives, it also appears as a message on screen with a button that takes you straight there.

What selecting it does depends on whether you are signed in to that group yet:

  • Already signed in to it — you are taken into the group, or simply back to your chats if you are looking at it already.
  • Not signed in to it — you are taken to the sign-in screen with your email address and the group already filled in, since a new membership still needs a session of its own before you can open it.

This is different from being invited as a brand-new user: in that case you receive the invitation email and the notification does not apply, because there is no account yet to notify.

Notification Settings

You have granular control over how you receive notifications. Settings can be configured globally and on a per-chat basis.

Global Notification Settings

These settings apply to all your activities within PrimeThink unless overridden by chat-specific settings.

  • Notifications - Global Push Settings:
    • On: Receive push notifications for all new notifications. (Default)
    • Mentions Only: Receive push notifications only when you are specifically mentioned.
    • Off: Disable all push notifications.
  • Notifications - Global Email Settings:
    • On: Receive email notifications for all unread notifications. (Default)
    • Mentions Only: Receive email notifications only for unread notifications where you are specifically mentioned.
    • Off: Disable all email notifications for general notifications.
  • Unread messages notifications - Global Email Settings:
    • On: Receive email notifications for all unread messages. (Default)
    • Direct Messages Only: Receive email notifications only for unread direct messages.
    • Off: Disable all email notifications for unread messages.

These global settings belong to the group, not to your user profile: they apply to every member of the group, and changing them needs permission to edit the group's settings.

Chat-Specific Notification Settings

For individual chats, you can override the global notification settings. This allows you to fine-tune how you are notified for specific conversations.

These settings are on the chat's Settings tab in the right panel, as Email Notifications Settings, Push Notifications Settings and Unread Messages Email Settings. They apply only to you, so any member of the chat can change them, in direct messages too, without needing permission to edit the chat itself.

  • Notifications - Chat Push Settings:
    • Default: Use the Global Push Settings. (Default)
    • On: Receive push notifications for all new notifications in this chat.
    • Mentions Only: Receive push notifications only when you are specifically mentioned in this chat.
    • Off: Disable all push notifications for this chat.
  • Notifications - Chat Email Settings:
    • Default: Use the Global Email Settings. (Default)
    • On: Receive email notifications for all unread notifications in this chat.
    • Mentions Only: Receive email notifications only for unread notifications where you are specifically mentioned in this chat.
    • Off: Disable all email notifications for general notifications in this chat.
  • Unread messages notifications - Chat Email Settings:
    • Default: Use the Global Email Settings for unread messages. (Default)
    • On: Receive email notifications for all unread messages in this chat.
    • Off: Disable all email notifications for unread messages in this chat.

The email digest applies each chat's Notifications - Chat Email Settings to that chat's own notifications, so setting one chat to Off or Mentions Only changes only what the digest lists from that chat. A chat setting can only narrow the global one: when the global email setting is Mentions Only or Off, the chat setting has no effect. If nothing is left to list, no digest is sent, and the count in the email is the number of notifications it lists.

By customizing these settings, you can ensure that you stay informed without being overwhelmed by notifications.

Sending Notifications from Live Apps

Live Apps can send notifications programmatically using the pt.sendNotification and pt.sendNotificationToUsers methods. These notifications support an optional emailBody parameter for extended content that appears in the email digest.

// Send to a single user
await pt.sendNotification(userId, 'Task Assigned', 'You have a new task', {
  emailBody: 'Click here to view the task: https://example.com/tasks/123'
});

// Broadcast to all chat members
await pt.sendNotificationToUsers('System Update', 'Maintenance scheduled', {
  emailBody: 'The system will be down for maintenance on Sunday from 2-4 AM.'
});

For complete API documentation and examples, see Sending Notifications to Users.