Notifications in PRO-dela: how not to miss a task, mention, or invitation

In a project, a dozen things happen at once: someone is assigned a task, a colleague replies in a discussion and mentions you via @Name, you are invited to a new project, and an invoice payment deadline approaches. PRO-dela does not leave these events inside a chat or email, where they can easily be scrolled past — each such event becomes a separate notification with read/unread status, a link to the relevant screen, and, if you have enabled it, a push message to the browser or phone — even if the PRO-dela tab is closed at that moment.

This article explains how the notification center on the “Notifications” page works, why the list remains common to all your companies at once, what exactly generates a notification about a task, mention, or invitation, how to enable push via the Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) service, and which six notification categories are actually separated under the hood — even if today the page has only one toggle “enable/disable everything”.

A notification is a state, not just text

Technically, a notification in PRO-dela is not a pop-up message that appears and disappears, but a record with a persistent state: whether it has been read or not, which company and which entity it relates to, and where the transition leads. This record remains the source of truth: the bell icon in the top panel shows the number of unread notifications (if more than 99 — compactly “99+”), and the “Notifications” page shows their full history, not just events from the last session.

The realtime channel and push via FCM are two ways to deliver the same event faster while you are online or while the phone is at hand. Neither replaces the record in the database: if the tab was closed at the moment of the event, neither realtime nor push will fire, but the notification will still be waiting in the notification center when you return.

Notification center: what is on the “Notifications” page

The page shows all events addressed personally to you as cards: title, company mark (or “Personal” if the event is not tied to any company), text, and time. At the top there is a counter “Unread total: N”, which is calculated separately for the current filter and for the entire list as a whole.

An unread notification has a noticeable accent background and border; as soon as you open it — click on the card or follow the “Go” link — it is automatically marked as read, no separate action is needed. If you need to sort everything out at once, there is a “Read all” button (unavailable if there are no unread notifications left) and a separate “Delete all” button — with confirmation in a modal window, because the action is irreversible. Each card can also be deleted individually, using the cross in the corner.

Notifications are not tied to the active company

Most sections of PRO-dela — projects, tasks, invoices, statistics — are tied to the active company: switch the company in the sidebar and the entire data set changes. Notifications are a deliberate exception to this rule: the list on the “Notifications” page is common to all your companies at once, not just the one currently selected. Otherwise, you could miss an important event simply because another company is open in the interface at that moment.

To avoid scrolling through notifications in a jumble, the page has a filter: “All companies”, a specific company by name, or “No company” — for notifications that are not tied to any company (personal invitations, for example). By the way, a company can appear in this filter even if you are not a member of it — for example, if you were mentioned just once in a discussion inside someone else's project of that company. PRO-dela does not check company membership for filtering the user's own notifications, because these are personal data, not company data.

If a notification leads to a project of another company, not the one currently active, following the link will first switch the active company — automatically, without a separate step — and only then open the required screen. Thus, a link from a notification never leads to a dead end like “this company is not currently selected”.

What causes a task notification

The most common reason to check notifications is that something happened with a task. PRO-dela creates a separate notification at each significant step of its life cycle:

• you are assigned a task or subtask;
• the planned (estimated) time for a task is changed after it was set — the notification goes to the current assignee;
• the task is sent for review;
• the task is accepted — or, conversely, returned for revision;
• a task that was already accepted or closed is reopened;
• you are assigned as the reviewer of a specific task or subtask — that is, you will be the one to review it;
• the time tracking timer for a task is started or stopped — the link from such a notification immediately opens the task statistics tab.

All these events go to a specific person in their personal notification channel, regardless of how many other people are in the project — the assignee does not need to track the change history on the task page themselves. For more details on statuses, assigning assignees, and acceptance, see the article “Tasks in PRO-dela”.

Mentions via @Name in chats and discussions

Mention works as usual: if you write @Name or @First Last in a message or discussion, PRO-dela parses the text and looks for a match among the participants of that particular project — its author and all employees with access to the project. First, the system looks for an exact match of the full name; if only one word is left after @, it tries to match it with a unique first name or unique last name among the project participants.

There is an honest caveat here: if there are two people with the same first name or same last name in the project, a short one-word mention may be ambiguous — for reliability, it is better to mention by full name. The notification itself preserves the discussion name, the author's name, and a short snippet of the text as context, and it leads directly to the discussion where you were mentioned. How chats, discussions, and reactions to messages work — in the article “Chats and collaboration in PRO-dela”.

Invitations to a project and to private discussions

“Invitation” in the context of notifications is not one entity, but several different scenarios at once:

• you are invited to a project — the notification leads to the page of the specific invitation, where you can accept or decline it;
• you are added to a private discussion — the notification is received by those who were actually added or returned to this discussion, not all project participants indiscriminately;
• you are removed from a private discussion — this is also a separate notification, not a silent disappearance of the chat from the list.

Inviting a guest who does not yet have an account in PRO-dela is arranged separately: since there is nowhere to send an internal notification to the recipient, the registration link for such an invitation is sent only by email. And when the invited user accepts or declines the invitation to the project, the notification about this is received not by them, but by the project author — with the email of the person who accepted or declined, so as not to check the status manually. Who can invite participants and what roles are available to them — is detailed in the article “Roles and team members in PRO-dela”.

Invoices and other background events

Not only tasks, mentions, and invitations turn into notifications. For invoices, PRO-dela separately notifies the payer about the issuance of a new invoice, a change in its status, and overdue payment — with the invoice number, amount, currency, and payment deadline right in the notification itself, so you do not have to open the invoice just for these details. Such events go through their own delivery category, separate from tasks, mentions, and invitations — that is, technically they can be enabled or disabled independently (though not yet with a separate button in the interface — more in the next section).

How to enable push notifications in the browser

Push in PRO-dela works via Firebase Cloud Messaging and arrives even when the tab with the application is closed — for example, while you are busy with another task or have simply closed the laptop. This channel does not appear automatically: on the “Notifications” page there is a separate button, and it has several states.

While the browser permission has not been requested, the button is called “Enable push” — clicking it starts a chain of several steps in a row: the browser asks for notification permission, PRO-dela registers a service worker, receives a unique push token from Firebase for this browser, and saves it on the server as a separate device. If permission has already been granted, the button changes to a green indicator “Push enabled” and an “Disable push” button next to it. And if the browser once blocked the permission, the button becomes inactive, and a hint appears next to it: “Push notifications are blocked by the browser” — the only case when you cannot enable push from the application itself: the permission must be changed in the browser settings for the site.

If you open PRO-dela in the same browser again after reinstalling or resetting, the new device registration automatically disables the previous one for the same browser — so that the same push message does not arrive twice in the same place.

Six categories under the hood, one toggle on the page

At the data level, PRO-dela can enable push separately for six groups of events: task updates, mentions, invitations, discussions, chat messages, and invoice events. Before actually sending a push, the platform separately checks whether delivery is allowed for a specific group for a specific user — and if push is disabled for that group, the notification will still remain in the list on the “Notifications” page, just without a pop-up push.

In practice, however, there is only one button on the notifications page today: “Enable push” enables push for all six groups at once, and “Disable push” disables them all at once. Fine-tuning by individual event types is not yet available in the interface, although the data for it is already laid out by categories — this is worth knowing in advance if you expected, for example, to receive push only for mentions, but not for every chat message.

What notifications in PRO-dela do not do yet

This system has clear boundaries, and it is worth knowing them in advance rather than finding out in practice.

Push is an additional channel, not the main one: it does not guarantee delivery by itself, but only speeds it up while you have at least one active, non-revoked device and an enabled browser permission. If push is unavailable — the browser is not supported, the permission is blocked, or no device is registered — the event will still remain in the database and will wait in the notification center, but there will be no pop-up message.

Fine-tuning push by individual categories (only mentions, only tasks, etc.) is not yet implemented in the interface — only full enabling or full disabling of all six groups at once is available.

Finally, notifications in PRO-dela are events that have already happened: you were assigned, mentioned, invited, invoiced. This is not a list of tasks for today or a personal plan for the week — for such scenarios there is a separate planning section, covered in the article “Plans and schedule in PRO-dela”.

How to get started: not missing a task, mention, or invitation

1. Open “Notifications” in the top panel — the history of what happened across all your companies and projects is already collected there.
2. Enable push with one button if you do not want to keep the PRO-dela tab open all day — the browser permission will be requested automatically on the first click.
3. Set up the company filter if you participate in several at once — this makes it easier to sort notifications by meaning rather than by chronology.
4. Mention colleagues via @Name in discussions and messages when you need their specific response, not the general attention of the whole chat.
5. Check the notification center if you expect to be added to a project or discussion — the invitation will come there too, in the common list.

Frequently asked questions

Is push mandatory to not miss a notification?

No. The notification database and the unread counter work independently of push — the event will in any case appear in the list on the “Notifications” page and in the bell icon in the top panel. Push only adds a pop-up message while the tab is closed.

Why did a company in which I am not a member appear in the filter?

Because the filter is built from your own notifications, not from the list of companies where you are formally a member. If, for example, you were mentioned once in a discussion inside someone else's project of that company, it will appear in the filter — this does not give access to the company's data, it is only about filtering personal notifications.

Can I enable push only for mentions, but not for other categories?

Not yet. The data is already separated into six distinct groups — tasks, mentions, invitations, discussions, messages, invoices — but the button on the notifications page is one today and enables or disables push for all six at once.

What to do if the browser blocked push permission?

From the application itself, you can no longer enable push back — the button becomes inactive with a hint about it. The permission must be restored in the browser's own settings for the PRO-dela site, after which the “Enable push” button will become available again.

Is a notification about a task in another company an error?

No, this is expected behavior: the notification list is common to all companies where an event involving you occurred. When following such a notification, PRO-dela will switch the active company itself before opening the required screen.

Do I need to separately click “read” on each notification?

No. Opening a card or following the “Go” link marks the notification as read automatically. You only need to press something separately for bulk actions — “Read all” or “Delete all”.

Start with one notification center for all companies

Register in PRO-dela and enable push in one click on the notifications page — so neither an assigned task, nor a mention, nor an invitation will get lost in scattered chats and emails.

If you are still comparing tariffs and features, check the current tariffs — and you will see how the notification center itself works right in the interface after registration.