Notifications in Coda help you and your team stay in sync. These notifications - which can take the form of in-doc notifications, emails, or both - ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. They help you know just where your teammates need you.

This article will cover the basics of Coda notifications, including what triggers notifications, how to access your notification center, how to customize notifications preferences, and more.

Notification formats

Notifications from Coda come in two forms:

In-doc notifications: These can be found in the notification hub, in the upper right corner of your doc. All notifications can be found here. Learn more in the section below.
Emails: Coda will also send email notifications to the email address associated with your Coda account. You won’t necessarily receive an email for every notification - only for ones that you don’t resolve in-doc. More on this below.

ℹ️ If you’ve set up Coda Bot for Slack, you can also receive notifications via Slack messages. When you @-mention someone in a comment or a doc, Coda Bot for Slack will alert the @-mentioned user(s) so they can quickly find their mention and respond or take action. Added bonus: Coda Bot aggregates these for each user in Slack, so you don’t have to search through all of the comments in a doc to find where you’re mentioned! Learn more here.

In-doc notifications

In-doc notifications live in your notification center. This can be found while in any Coda doc, by clicking on the bell icon 🔔 in the upper right corner of the doc.

Whenever you have unread notifications, you’ll see a red badge next to this bell, indicating the number of unread notifications.

When you open your notification center, you’ll see a feed of in-doc notifications, starting with the most recent. You can use the toggle at the top of the list to choose between All (all notifications across all docs), and This doc (only notifications pertaining to the current doc).

Clicking on a notification will take you to the location where that notification was triggered. So for instance, if the notification was caused by a comment on a row, you’ll be taken to that specific row in the doc. If the notification stems from another doc, a new tab will open and lead you to that location. If the notification stems from the current doc, you will simply jump to that location while remaining in the same tab.

Email notifications

By default, Coda will often send you an email when someone mentions you in a comment or references your name in a doc that is shared with you. That way, you'll know if something needs your attention.

But you may notice that you don’t always receive emails for every in-doc notification. Why is that? That’s because there’s a 20-minute delay between when a notification is triggered, and when the associated email notification goes out. If you open your notification center (by clicking on bell icon in the upper right corner of a doc) within this 20-minute window, the email notification typically won't be sent. This is based on the assumption that you’ve already seen the notification in-doc and don’t need to see it again via email.

Check out the section below to learn how to adjust your email notification preferences, including how to opt out of these email notifications.

Notification triggers

There are a variety of things that trigger notifications in Coda. Some of the most common triggers are described in the table below:

Trigger	Example
Tagging (or @-mentioning)	Someone tags you anywhere in a doc (via @ mentioning), such as the canvas, a canvas column, a comment thread, etc.
People columns	Someone adds you to a People column (assuming they’ve also shared the doc with you and turned on notifications for the column; learn more here)
Comments	Someone comments on a row, table, page, or doc that you’ve subscribed to (learn more here)
Doc access requests	Someone requests access to a doc you own
Notify buttons	Buttons can be set up to send custom notifications to a user (or users) whenever clicked.
Notify automations	You set up an automation that sends a custom notification to yourself, so you are notified whenever that automation runs.

Additionally, there are some less common notification triggers that you might encounter. For instance, you’ll get notified when your doc exceeds it’s size or automation limits, when someone shares a doc with you, when someone transfers doc ownership to you, and more.

Adjust notification preferences

You can adjust your email notification preferences in your account settings. Just follow these steps:

Click on your avatar in the upper right corner of a doc, and select Account settings
1. Alternatively, go to coda.io/account
Scroll down to the Email settings section
Under the Strictly business category, you can toggle on or off as needed. If you don’t want to receive emails notifications for in-doc mentions, toggle off the first option.

That’s it. The changes will take effect going forward.

FAQs

Why am I not receiving email notifications from Coda?

There could be a few reasons for this. First, check your account settings to see whether you’ve disabled email notifications (more on this above).

If email notifications are enabled, you may still not be seeing emails due to the delay window. There is a 20-minute delay between the trigger (@-mention, adding to People column, etc.) and an email being sent. If you open your notification center (by clicking on the bell icon in the upper right of any doc) within this 20-minute window, no email is ultimately sent.

Can I turn off or customize in-doc notifications?

It’s not currently possible to fully disable in-doc notifications. But you can choose to opt out of notifications from comments on a page and doc level. Learn more about this here.

How does the “notify when added” setting within the People columns work?

If someone has access to the doc already, then they will automatically receive a notification whenever you add them to a People column (assuming this notification setting is toggled on).

Note: Even with this setting toggled on, notifications will only be sent to people if they already have access to the doc.

If I add someone to a People column in a doc they don’t have access to, will they be notified?

No. If the doc is not shared with them, you can add them to a People column and they will not be notified (even if notifications for that column are turned on). They will only receive notifications if you share the doc with them and have notifications turned on for the column. Learn more about People columns and their settings here.