---
title: "Notifications and reminders | Trelice User Guide"
description: "The bell at the top of the screen, email notifications, and choosing what you receive."
canonical_url: "https://www.trelice.com/docs/notifications"
---

# Notifications and reminders

Trelice keeps you informed in two ways: a bell at the top of the screen for in-app notifications, and emails for the moments you are away. You choose, type by type, which of each you receive. Trelice also sends due-date reminders on its own, so deadlines do not depend on anyone remembering to nag.

## The notification bell

The bell icon sits in the bar at the top of every page (see [Finding your way around](/docs/finding-your-way-around)). When you have unread notifications, a small red badge on the bell shows the count, "3", or "99+" if things have really piled up. The count updates by itself every half minute.

### Reading your notifications

1. Click the bell.
2. A panel titled **Notifications** drops down. Unread items have a pale blue background and a blue dot on the right; each shows an icon, a title, a short message, and how long ago it arrived ("5m ago", "2d ago").
3. Click a notification to act on it.

**What you'll see:** the notification is marked as read, the panel closes, and Trelice takes you directly to the relevant place, the section awaiting your review, the task, or the protocol in question.

- To clear the badge without visiting each item, click **Mark all read** at the top of the panel.
- To close the panel without doing anything, click the small **X** or anywhere outside the panel.
- At the bottom of the panel, a **Notification preferences** link takes you to the settings page described below.

> **Note:** "No notifications yet" simply means nothing has happened that concerns you, not that something is broken.

## What Trelice notifies you about

These are the notification types, exactly as they appear on the preferences page:

- **Section submitted for review**: a writer sent a section to reviewers.
- **Section ready for your review**: in a multi-level workflow, the previous level finished and it is now your turn.
- **Section approved**: a section you are involved with was approved.
- **Changes requested on section**: a reviewer sent a section back with comments.
- **Assigned as section writer**: a section was handed to you to write.
- **Assigned as section reviewer**: you were added as a reviewer.
- **Due date approaching**: a deadline of yours is getting close.
- **Past due date**: a deadline of yours has passed.
- **Approved section reopened for golden-thread change**: an approved section was reopened because a linked section changed; see [Golden threads](/docs/golden-threads).
- **Approved section reopened under amendment**: an approved section was reopened as part of an amendment.
- **Task reminder**: a colleague nudged you about a task from the [Pending Tasks](/docs/pending-tasks) page.

## Choosing what you receive

Every type can arrive in-app, by email, both, or neither, your choice.

1. Click the bell, then **Notification preferences** at the bottom of the panel. (The same page is available from Settings.)
2. The page is headed **Notification Preferences** and explains: "Choose which notifications you receive in-app and via email. Changes apply immediately after saving."
3. The table has three columns: **Notification Type**, **In-App**, and **Email**. Each row is one of the types listed above, with a toggle switch in each column.
4. Click a toggle to turn it on (colored) or off (gray).
5. Click **Save Preferences** at the bottom.

**What you'll see:** a green message, **Preferences saved successfully**.

> **Note:** The **Save Preferences** button stays gray until you have actually changed something. If you flipped a toggle and the button is still gray, you may have flipped it back to where it started.

> **Troubleshooting:** Expecting emails but not receiving them? First check the **Email** toggle for that type here. Then check your spam or junk folder, ask your IT team to allow mail from Trelice if messages keep landing there.

## Due-date reminders

You do not need to watch the calendar. Every morning, Trelice checks all authoring and review deadlines and quietly emails the people concerned:

- A first reminder a few days before the deadline (your organization sets the exact lead time, typically three days).
- A more urgent one shortly before the deadline (typically the day before).
- If a deadline passes, an overdue notice goes to the person responsible, and to your organization's administrators, so late work is never invisible.

Reminders respect your preferences above (**Due date approaching** and **Past due date**), and Trelice will not send you the same reminder twice in one day.

## Where notifications come from, and what to do with them

Most notifications carry a link, clicking them lands you where the work is. A **Section ready for your review** notification, for example, leads toward your [approval queue](/docs/approval-queue); an **Assigned as section writer** notification leads to the section itself. If you prefer to work from lists rather than interruptions, the [Pending Tasks](/docs/pending-tasks) page always shows the same outstanding work in one place, notifications are the messenger, not the record.