How notifications work

The Activity page in the Octopus.do dashboard: new comments, mentions, replies and changes in your projects, with unread rows marked by a dot

Octopus.do tells you what happens in the projects you work on in two places: the Activity page on your dashboard and email. Both are built from the same events, so you are never emailed about something you have already seen in the app.

What you are notified about

Comments — someone left a new comment or started a new thread in a project you take part in.
Mentions — someone @mentioned you in a comment.
Replies — someone replied in a discussion you are part of: you commented there before, or you started the thread.
Changes — other people edited a project you take part in: its pages, their content or anything else.

Your own comments and edits never show up.

Which projects count as yours

You hear about a project when you take part in it:

you created it,
you were invited to it by name,
you edited it, commented in it, started a thread in it, or were mentioned in it.

Being in a team gives you access to the team's projects, but not their notifications. A teammate who has never touched a project gets neither its comments nor its change summaries, so a busy team is not flooded by projects other people work on. To follow a project you have not worked on, turn on its notifications in the project menu, as described in Settings for one project below.

The Activity page

Open Activity in the left sidebar of the dashboard; in a team it sits below Team settings and Members. A coral dot next to it means there is something unread.

Activity in a team workspace: four unread rows under New to you, read rows under Earlier, and an older month below

The page lists what happened in the projects of the current workspace — My projects or a team — newest first:

New to you holds everything you have not seen yet. Mark all as read clears it.
Earlier holds what you have already seen this month; older months follow, each under its own name.

Each row tells you where it happened (a page, a block or a thread, and the project), who did what, and when. Click a row to open that place in the project; the row is marked as read.

You do not have to clear the page yourself: opening a project marks its changes as read, and opening a discussion marks its comments as read. Anything you have seen in the app does not show up as new and is not emailed to you.

Activity is kept for 90 days. Older rows leave the page; the comments themselves stay in the project.

Emails

Mentions and replies to you are emailed right away.
Other comments in your projects are emailed at the pace you choose: Instantly, Every 30 minutes (one email with all the new comments) or Once a day.
Changes made by other people come only in the daily summary: one email a day, at the hour you choose, in your time zone. It lists who made how many changes in each project, and the day's new comments too if you get comment emails once a day.

Whatever you read in the app before an email goes out is left out of it.

Emails come from noreply@octopus.do; if they land in spam, add the address to your contacts. Every email has a Manage notifications link to your account settings and an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing switches that email off in your account settings: comment emails go back to Mentions and replies, or the daily summary is turned off. You can turn it back on at any time.

Account settings

Go to Account and find the Notifications section. It applies to every project you take part in.

Comments — All comments, Mentions and replies or None. The default is Mentions and replies. Whatever you pick, mentions and replies to you still reach you, except with None.
Send them — Instantly, Every 30 minutes or Once a day. Mentions and replies to you are always sent instantly.
Daily summary of changes in projects — the main switch for change emails. When it is off, no project sends you a summary, whatever the project's own setting says.
Daily emails at — the hour the daily emails arrive. The time zone is taken from your browser and shown under the setting.

Settings for one project

On the dashboard, open the ⋯ menu on the project card and choose Notifications. What you set here overrides your account settings for this project only.

Comments — Same as account, All, Mentions and replies or None.
Daily summary of changes — the switch shows what happens now: on if you take part in the project, off if you do not. Flip it to change that — turn it on to follow a project you have never touched, or off to mute one of your own.

Common questions

I am in the team, but I get nothing about one of its projects.
You have not taken part in it yet. Comment in it, edit it, or turn on its notifications in the project menu.

Can I get an email the moment anyone comments?
Yes. In Account → Notifications, set Comments to All comments and Send them to Instantly.

I do not want change summaries for one client project.
Open the project menu → Notifications and turn off Daily summary of changes.

I want the daily summary only, no comment emails.
Set Comments to None and keep the daily summary on. Note that None also stops the emails about mentions and replies.

Do guests get notified?
No. People who comment without an account appear as "Guest" in your activity and emails, but they do not receive notifications themselves.