A guide for administrators and everyone on your team

Iris notifies you about the work that needs you: questions assigned to you, mentions, workflow steps, project milestones and expiring Knowledge Map files. Notification Settings decide how those reach you — by email, in Slack, and in the in-app notification bell.

This guide covers what an administrator sets for the whole organization, what each person can change for themselves, and the controls that live on an individual project.

How settings stack up

Notification settings resolve in layers. Each layer only overrides what it explicitly sets, so anything you leave alone keeps inheriting from the layer above:

1. Iris defaults — sensible settings for a new organization.

2. Organization defaults — what your admin sets in Settings → Notifications. These apply to everyone in your organization.

3. Personal preferences — what each person sets on their own profile, if their role has the "Manage own notifications" permission.

4. Per-project — muting a single project for yourself, and extra recipients an admin adds on a specific project.

Where each setting lives

For administrators: organization defaults

Go to Settings → Notifications. Everything on this page applies to every person in your organization who has not set their own preferences, and every change saves immediately — there is no Save button to remember.

Settings → Notifications in the left sidebar.

Email delivery

Choose how often Iris sends notification emails:

• Right away — one email per notification, as it happens.

• Every 15 minutes — everything from the last 15 minutes arrives in a single email. A good middle ground for busy teams.

• Once a day — one email each morning at 9:00 AM ET (8:00 AM once the clocks go back).

This choice affects email only. Slack messages and the in-app bell are always immediate.

Daily summary of outstanding work

A separate morning email listing open questions and pending workflow steps, grouped by project. It is sent only when someone actually has outstanding work, so a clear plate means no email.

Notification types

The grid turns each kind of notification on or off per channel. Email and Slack each have their own switch, so you can, for example, send mentions to Slack and keep assignments in email.

Organization defaults: delivery cadence, the daily summary, and the notification-type grid.

For administrators: where Slack notifications go

This one choice decides where every Slack notification lands. It does not touch email or the in-app bell.

The three Slack delivery options. "Direct message only" is the default.

• Direct message only — each person gets a Slack DM about the things they are involved in. Nobody else sees them.

• Channel and direct message — people still get their DM, and a channel gets a copy so the team can follow along.

• Channel only — everything goes to one channel instead of DMs: one message per event rather than one per person.

Both channel options ask for a Slack channel ID — the ID such as C0123ABCDEF, not the channel name or its URL. The Iris Slack bot must already be a member of that channel. The display name is optional and is only used to label the channel inside Iris.

Choosing a channel option reveals the channel ID field. Click Save destination to apply it.

"Channel only" spells out the trade-off before you save.

If your organization has custom per-event routing set up through the API, this panel says so and stays read-only rather than flattening a configuration someone built deliberately.

If Slack is not connected yet, you can still make your choice — messages simply start flowing once the Slack integration is connected.

For administrators: invites and permissions

New user invites

The invite email Iris sends when an admin adds a user. It is separate from the notification defaults above. Turn it off if you provision users through your identity provider and do not want Iris sending its own invite.

The new user invite switch.

Who can change their own settings

This is controlled per role by the "Manage own notifications" permission, managed under Settings → Users. Roles without it always receive the organization defaults and see a read-only view on their profile.

A shortcut through to roles and permissions.

What someone without the permission sees on their profile: the settings that apply to them, clearly marked as inherited and not editable.

For everyone: your own notification preferences

Open your profile and find the Notifications card. The controls are the same ones your admin uses, applied only to you.

Your own preferences. "Org default" marks every setting still inherited from your organization; the Reset link returns a row you have changed back to the default.

• Pick your own email cadence — for example, keep the organization on a 15-minute digest while you take everything right away.

• Turn the daily summary on or off for yourself.

• Switch individual notification types on or off per channel.

• Changes save as you make them, and Reset gives a setting back to your organization default.

The notification bell

The Notifications row at the bottom of the left sidebar shows how many unread notifications you have and opens your recent feed.

The sidebar row, with the unread count.

Unread notifications are highlighted. Click one to jump straight to the question, step or project it is about.

• Unread items are highlighted and marked with a dot; opening one marks it read and takes you to the work it refers to.

• Mark all as read clears the badge in one click.

• View all notifications opens the full inbox on your Assignments page.

Common questions

Need a hand? Contact your Iris administrator or reach out to the Iris support team.