Notifications

The desk can tell you when a chat needs you: on your computer while the desk is in a background tab, and on your devices as a push notification while it’s closed. Everything is per person: each teammate picks their own events and devices in Settings → Notifications. Push uses the browser’s standard Web Push. There’s no notification service to sign up for: your desk generates its own keys the first time someone turns notifications on.

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What you can be notified about

Under Notify me when, each event has its own switch. All are on until you turn them off. Rules that apply to all of them:

• You’re never notified about your own actions. Assigning yourself or mentioning yourself doesn’t notify you.
• Members only. Someone removed from the workspace gets nothing, and their devices are dropped.
• Round robin counts as both. When round robin assigns you a chat that just needed a person, you’re notified if either A chat is assigned to you or A chat needs a person is on. See Assignment.

A notification’s title says what happened, for example Dana Lee needs a person, New chat assigned to you: Dana Lee, Sam assigned you Dana Lee, Dana Lee replied or Sam mentioned you (Dana Lee). The text is the customer’s latest message. For a mention, it’s the note itself: internal note text only ever goes to teammates, in a mention. Clicking a notification opens that conversation in your desk tab, or a new tab if none is open. Each conversation has one notification at a time; a newer one replaces the older.

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Where notifications show up

What you get depends on what the desk is doing on your side: “Looking at” means the tab is visible and the window has focus. The desk reports this to the server as you switch tabs, so you don’t get a push on your phone for a chat you’re reading on your laptop. If the same event arrives both ways, the second copy replaces the first silently instead of alerting twice.

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Turn on notifications on a device

Repeat on every browser and phone where you want notifications. Your devices lists them all, with when each was added, when a notification last reached it, and failures. Remove stops notifications to that device; Turn off on this device does the same for the one you’re on. You can have up to 20 devices. If a push service reports that a device’s subscription is gone (you cleared site data, uninstalled the browser), the desk deletes that device on the next send.

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iPhone and iPad

Safari on iPhone and iPad supports push only for a web app added to the Home Screen. The This device card says so:

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When it doesn’t work

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Sound

Play a sound (on by default) plays a soft chime in the open desk for the events you’re notified about. It doesn’t change who is notified. It doesn’t play while you’re looking at the conversation the event is about. Press Test sound to hear it. Browsers only allow sound after you’ve clicked or typed in the page, so the chime starts working after your first interaction with the desk tab.

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Privacy and storage

• Your choices are stored on your membership, per workspace.
• The desk’s private push key is generated on first use and kept only in the workspace’s Durable Object storage, never in the database or any API response.
• The settings page shows your devices by browser and OS, never the push endpoint or its keys.

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Next steps