Notification settings

Teralo tells you things by email. There is no bell in the top bar, no unread badge and no in-app inbox of alerts: if Teralo wants your attention, it lands in your mailbox at the address on your account.

That makes this page more consequential than a notifications screen usually is, because turning something off here means nothing will ever tell you.

The switches are at Settings, then Account, then Preferences, in the block at the bottom of the page headed Notification Preferences.

The in-app half is My Items

The reason Teralo can get away with having no notification centre is that it has a register of what is waiting for you. My Items gathers everything assigned to you or sitting with you for a decision, from every tool, onto one screen, with the count beside it in the sidebar.

So the two halves work like this: email tells you something happened, My Items tells you what is still outstanding. The one gap to know about is that My Items is per project, so somebody who has turned most of their email off and works across four jobs has four screens to check rather than one. See My Items.

Where the emails go

To the email address on your account, and there is only one. It is both your sign-in and your notification address, so moving it moves both. See Your profile.

The switches, module by module

The panel lists 24 modules and 95 individual notifications, one switch each. Modules are collapsed by default, with a count on the right reading how many of that module's notifications are on, so you can see at a glance where you have changed something.

The module names are the tool names from the sidebar: Inspections, Observations, Bookings, Contracts, Direct Costs, Submittals, Meetings, Mail, Permits, Site Diary, Timesheets, Incidents, Equipment, Safety Data Sheets, Method Statements, Inductions, Procurement, Directory, Applications, Reports, Program, Site Messages, Whiteboards and Passive Fire.

Everything is on unless you turn it off. Only an explicit refusal is stored, which has one useful consequence: a notification added to Teralo after you set your preferences arrives switched on rather than silently opted out.

There is no save button. A switch takes effect as you flip it.

Why they sit in a danger zone

The panel is deliberately styled as a warning rather than as a settings card, and the note above it is worth reading in full rather than clicking past. Its four points:

• You may miss critical project communications such as contract termination notices, permit expiry warnings, incident reports and safety observations
• Disabling notifications may conflict with your contractual obligations to acknowledge or respond to formal notices within required timeframes
• You may not be notified of items requiring your urgent action, such as workflow approvals, submittal reviews or inspection issues assigned to you
• Teralo accepts no liability for missed communications resulting from user-configured notification preferences

The second one is the one people underestimate. A contract that gives you ten business days to respond to a notice does not extend that because you turned the email off.

Mandatory emails: security, billing and direct mentions

Three kinds of email have no switch anywhere:

• Security emails. The verification code for a password change, an email change or a two-factor step. These are how you prove control of the account, so there is nothing to opt out of.
• Billing emails. Invoices, payment failures and anything else about the subscription.
• Direct mentions. Naming somebody with an @ in a comment or a drawing annotation always reaches them. It is the one deliberate override in the system, on the reasoning that a person addressed by name has been addressed by name.

Workflow updates: the one switch not to turn off

Workflow updates, which most modules have.

The note above the panel lists workflow approval requests among the things that cannot be turned off. Its own module switch does turn them off. A module's Workflow updates switch covers every message that module's workflows send you, and "an action is waiting on you" is one of them, along with the reminders that chase it.

So switching it off does not merely reduce the noise from that tool: it stops the tool asking you to do your part, while the workflow itself waits on you exactly as before. The record still shows the step sitting with your name on it, and it still appears in My Items. Nothing will chase you.

Turn off Created, Status changed and Comment added by all means. Leave Workflow updates on.

Opting out is visible to other people

The panel says so in one line, and it is easy to miss: "Your notification preferences may be visible to other users when they compose mail, messages, or select recipients in other modules."

It is accurate. When somebody is picking recipients for mail, a meeting invite, an incident or injury report, a site message, an observation, a safety data sheet distribution, a report snapshot or schedule, or a distribution list, a person who has opted out of that kind of email is marked in the picker. Without the marker they would be sending into a void, because an opted-out recipient is skipped silently.

The practical effect is that opting out is a visible decision rather than a private one, which is the right way round for a tool people are relying on to have reached you.

The Communication card

Above the notification panel sits a Communication card with five switches: Transactional emails, Security emails, Marketing emails, Newsletter and Product updates.

Treat these as a stated preference rather than as a control. Your choices are recorded against your account, and no email Teralo sends today consults them. The switches that decide what actually arrives in your inbox are the per-module ones below.

Theme: light mode, dark mode or system

At the top of the same page, Display & Regional holds the theme: Light, Dark or System. System follows whatever your device is set to, which is the one to pick if your phone already switches itself in the evening.

The same three are in the menu under your name in the sidebar, which is the faster route.

Language and timezone

Both are on that card and neither does what its label suggests, so it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to test it.

Language offers nine options and Teralo's interface is English only. Choosing another one records the choice and translates nothing.

Timezone is filled in from your browser the first time you sign in, and it is not what any date you read is formatted in. Dates and times in the app are rendered in your device's own timezone, so they follow you when you travel without your touching anything. Where Teralo needs to decide what day something falls on, it uses the project's timezone, set on the project rather than here, which is why a diary entry belongs to the site's Tuesday and not to yours. See Program for where a project's timezone matters most.

One notification setting that lives somewhere else

Whether mail notifications carry the attachments is a per-person setting on the Mail tool's own settings page, at Settings, then Mail, rather than here. Turn it off if Teralo mail is filling your mailbox with drawing sets you already have. See Mail.

When you are getting too much email

• Start with the module counts. Directory has thirteen notifications and Inductions has ten, which makes them the usual source of a flooded inbox. Contracts has nine and Procurement has eight.
• Cut the informational ones, keep the ones that ask. Created, Status changed, Comment added, Published and Distribution tell you something happened. Assigned, Contribution requested, Action item assigned and Worker sign-on request are asking you to act.
• Leave Workflow updates on, for the reason above.
• If the problem is one project rather than all of them, this page is the wrong tool: it is account-wide and has no per-project setting. What usually fixes it is being taken off a distribution list, or the person composing choosing a narrower recipient list.