A shared mailbox is no use if nobody opens it. Trupeo’s notifications exist for one reason only: to tell you when something is waiting for you, and to leave you alone the rest of the time.
The notification center
On a computer, “Notifications” is in the column on the left, under “New email”; a dot and a number say how many are new. On a phone, it is the bell at the top of the screen. Click it: the notifications page opens, the most recent at the top, each line with its date at its end, as in the email list (the time today, then yesterday, then the day).
Click a line: it opens beside the list and becomes read. A line about an email shows that email, with everything you usually do there: reply, “I’ll take it”, “Mark done”. The reminder about emails waiting too long, a line such as 4 people have been waiting for 2 days, offers to open the “Still to do” view, and an account problem leads to the page where it gets fixed: reconnecting the mailbox, or billing. On a phone, the open line takes the whole screen; “Notifications”, at the top, brings you back to the list.
Under the title, the filters show “All”, “Unread”, “Mentions” or the emails “Handed to you”; “More” adds replies, waiting emails, the account and “Following”, what happened on the emails you follow. On a narrow screen, a phone for instance, “All” and “Unread” stay on the line and every other filter is under “More”. The dot on the left of an unread line, or the ring that takes its place on a read line (under the mouse, on a computer), marks the line read or unread without opening it. “Mark everything as read” clears the count in one go.
Once a notification is dealt with, delete it: the bin at the end of its line (under the mouse, on a computer; always there on a phone) takes it out of your list, and “Notification deleted” shows with “Undo” for a few seconds. The ”⋯” next to “Mark everything as read” (at the end of the filters’ line, on a phone) offers “Delete read notifications”, which does it for every line you have already read. Deleting a notification touches only your list: the email it is about, and the other members’ notifications, stay as they are.
With the keyboard, Tab goes from one line to the next, Enter opens it, Space marks it read or unread, Delete deletes it, and Escape closes what is open.
When several events concern the same conversation, they are gathered on one line rather than stacked: three replies in a row on the same conversation do not make three lines.
Opening an email in Trupeo also marks its notifications as read, exactly like opening it from “Notifications”.
The cases
Here is everything Trupeo can tell you about.
- Someone hands me an email. A member handed you an email.
- Someone mentions me in a note. A member wrote your name with
@in a team note. - A reply arrives on an email I’m on. An email you are on got a reply.
- Nobody is on an email. A new email has sat in “To assign” for ten minutes without anyone opening it, taking it or replying. The whole team is told, and the notification carries an “I’ll take it” button. If someone was quicker, the button gives way to their name (“Sam is on it”) and nothing is taken from them.
- Someone has been waiting too long for a reply. Once a day, the emails where someone has been waiting for more than a day.
- The mailbox is cut off or a payment fails. A mailbox that no longer receives, a payment that failed, a trial that is ending. The mailbox problem is shown to every member, the billing problems to the owners. The most urgent one also shows as a banner at the top of the app until it is fixed.
- Something happens on an email I follow. A new email, a team note, an email marked done or reopened, someone taking it or handing it over, an email the team sends. See the section on following an email, below.
Following an email
To keep an eye on an email another member is on, without taking it, open it and choose “Follow” in ”⋯”, the first entry of the menu. Under the subject, the status line then says “You follow this email”, and “Follow” becomes “Unfollow”. A message confirms it, with “Undo”.
Following changes nothing for the team: nobody sees who follows an email, who is on it stays the same, and nothing moves in Gmail, Outlook or your email program. Several members can follow the same email. Only the “Follow” button makes you follow: replying, writing a note or handing an email over never does.
The emails you follow are in the “Following” view, in the left column with “Done” and “All” (on a phone, in “Other views”), whatever their state, done ones included. An email moved to Trash leaves it, and comes back if it is restored.
On an email you follow, you are told when a new email arrives, when the team leaves a note, when it is marked done or reopened, when someone takes it, hands it over or puts it back in “To assign”, and when the team sends an email, from Trupeo or from Gmail, Outlook or your email program. Never about what you do yourself, and never twice: if you are on the email, a reply already reaches you through “A reply arrives on an email I’m on”; if a note mentions you, you get the mention; if the email is handed to you, you get “Someone hands me an email”. New emails on one conversation gather on a single line, and everything else is a line of its own. The settings are under “On an email I follow”, at the bottom of the “Notifications” page.
If you can no longer see an email (an owner changed your scopes) or you leave the mailbox, you no longer follow it.
How you are told
Open “Settings”, then, in the “Your account” group, the “Notifications” page.
These settings are yours alone. What you tick or untick changes nothing for the other members of the mailbox: each member sets their own notifications. The page asks two questions.
“How to tell you”:
- Notifications on this device: a notification on your phone or computer, the moment it happens. The line says whether they are turned on, not turned on yet (with “Turn it on”), or blocked by the browser (with “How to allow them”).
- Emails: an email to your address, if you have not opened the email in Trupeo within fifteen minutes.
- Morning summary: a single email in the morning, when something is still unopened.
“When to tell you”: one line per case, and on each line a box per way of being told: “In the app”, “Notification”, “Email”, “Morning summary”. On a computer the boxes line up under those four words; on a phone they are under the case’s name, each with its word. Tick what you want for each case: mentions by email and the rest by notification only, for instance.
“In the app” is the box for Trupeo’s notification center. Untick it and that case no longer creates a notification for you: nothing in your list, nothing in the count. The notification on your device, the email and the morning summary’s line all start from that notification, so they stop with it: their boxes turn gray and unticked, and the line says so. Tick “In the app” again and they come back as you left them. One exception: the morning summary still counts the emails that have been waiting too long, even with “Someone has been waiting too long for a reply” unticked in the app, because that number comes from the emails themselves. Unticking does not remove the notifications you already have: delete them from the list (see above). The account line below has no “In the app” box.
At first, “In the app” is ticked for every case, and:
- “Someone hands me an email”, “Someone mentions me in a note” and “A reply arrives on an email I’m on” tell you by notification and by email;
- “Nobody is on an email” tells you only by notification, after ten minutes with nobody on it;
- “Someone has been waiting too long for a reply” tells you only in the morning summary, once twenty-four hours have passed since their last email.
The last line, “The mailbox is cut off or a payment fails”, has no box and says “Always”: that case always arrives in the app and tells you by notification and by email, because without it the team would stop seeing the emails without knowing. When a mailbox stops receiving, every member gets an email; when a payment fails, every owner gets one. One email per problem, not one a day, and it reaches you even if you unsubscribed from Trupeo’s other emails. This case does not go into the morning summary.
Below it, under the sub-heading “On an email I follow”, one line per case: “A new email arrives”, “The team leaves a note”, “It’s marked done or reopened”, “Someone takes it or hands it over” and “The team sends an email”. Each tells you in the app, by notification and by email, and has no “Morning summary” box. Untick what you do not need.
Each box saves itself, and “Saved” shows on its line with “Undo”. A box changes that case only.
Two emails are deliberately missing at first. “Nobody is on an email” can fire several times a morning in a team that does not say who is on what: as a notification it is a reminder, in five personal mailboxes it is a second shared mailbox. And “Someone has been waiting too long for a reply” is already in the morning summary: an extra email would mean two emails the same morning for the same fact.
Notifications on this device
They need a permission, given once per phone or computer: “Turn it on”, on the “Notifications on this device” line. The notifications page offers the same: “Get told on this device when something needs you”. On a phone, as soon as an email is handed to you, “For me” asks too: “Get a notification on this phone when an email is handed to you?”, with “Turn on” and “Not now”.
On an iPhone, add Trupeo to your home screen first, then turn notifications on: Safari does not allow them otherwise. The line says so, with “How to install Trupeo”. See Install Trupeo on your phone.
Emails have their own boxes, so that no more notifications never means no way left to reach me.
If your browser blocks notifications
The line then says “Blocked by this browser. Trupeo can’t turn them back on for you.”, and “How to allow them” leads to this page. The browser decides, and only it can lift the block:
- On a computer: click the icon on the left of the address, in the browser’s bar, open the site’s permissions, and set notifications to Allow. Reload Trupeo, then go back to the “Notifications” page.
- On a phone: open the phone’s settings, find Trupeo (or your browser, if Trupeo is not installed) in the list of apps, and allow its notifications.
When an email actually goes out
An email is never immediate. Trupeo waits fifteen minutes, then checks whether you saw the notification in the meantime: email opened in Trupeo, line clicked in the notification center, or notification tapped on your phone. If so, the email does not go out.
In other words: if you work in Trupeo, you get almost no notification emails. They are there for the times you are not in it.
The morning summary
It arrives once a day, in the morning, in the time zone set on your account’s “Profile” page, on the “Time zone” line. For each case that goes through the summary, it lists what you have not opened yet:
- the emails handed to you;
- the notes that mention you;
- the replies that arrived on the emails you are on;
- the emails nobody has taken yet;
- the number of emails waiting for a reply for more than a day, for the team and for you.
It only goes out when it has something to say: on a morning when everything is opened or done, it does not go out. And it does not go out at all if no case has its “Morning summary” box ticked.
Something that already got an email can show up again if you still have not opened it: the email says this just arrived, the summary says this is still here this morning.
What comes next
To understand why Trupeo insists so much on the emails nobody has taken, see Understand the To assign view.