Use notifications to notice, investigate and follow up on support work

Updated Wednesday, October 28, 2026 · Marcel Gravelle

Notifications help you notice a new event while you work across cases and customers. The useful outcome is the action you take after opening the relevant record: understand what changed, confirm who owns the next step, and keep the customer commitment. In Core, the Notifications panel is a place to review your updates; a brief on-screen alert is only one way to draw attention to them.

At a glance

For: agents and support leads managing active customer work. Applies to: Supportbench Core.

Start here: Top utility bar → Notifications

Open and act on a notification · Know which kind of update you are reading · Read the feed as a working list, not an audit report · Clear your current notifications deliberately · Build a reliable B2B support routine · Tune alert volume without hiding important work · Troubleshoot missing or confusing notifications

Open and act on a notification

In the Core agent workspace, open Notifications in the top utility bar. The bell can show a count of pending items.
Read the panel headed Notifications. Use Filter notifications when you need to narrow the visible feed to a relevant word or phrase.
Open the relevant item and inspect its destination or message. Read the latest case activity before responding: the notification describes an event, while the case shows the current situation.
Decide whether you own the next action, should coordinate with the owner, or only need the information. Use the normal case assignment, discussion, mention or task action when work needs to change hands.
After handling an item, use Dismiss notification where the item provides that control. Confirm the expected item has left your feed. Dismissing it does not resolve the case or prove that another person acted.

The notification feed is scoped to the signed-in agent and account. Seeing a notification is not a grant of permission to unrelated records. If the destination is unavailable, check the current record access with an administrator rather than sharing someone else’s session.

Know which kind of update you are reading

Surface	Purpose	What it does not prove
Notifications bell and feed	Review your stored updates and applicable active Supportbench messages.	That all work assigned to you appears in the feed or that a customer received an email.
Brief in-app alert	Draw attention while a connected browser page is visible.	Guaranteed operating-system push delivery, background delivery or an acknowledgement.
@Mentions	Review direct collaboration requests in their own context.	That the mention changed case ownership or is governed by every bell preference in the same way.
Email alert	Deliver an eligible notification event to the configured agent email channel.	That every bell item is also emailed or that it reached the inbox.
Saved view or queue	Review the actual set of cases matching operational criteria.	That opening or watching the list assigns every case to you.

Core’s visible real-time alert behavior depends on an active connection and a visible browser document. A hidden tab, interrupted connection or absent browser session can prevent the brief alert from being shown. Review the feed and your work views when you return; avoid building a service promise around always seeing a pop-up.

Read the feed as a working list, not an audit report

The current feed returns the newest 50 visible notification records and applicable unread active global messages. It is intentionally bounded. It is not a complete historical report of every case event, and its count is not a measure of your assigned workload or overdue commitments.

Opening a Supportbench message marks that message as viewed and opens its detail. Return to the feed after reading it. Some entries provide a dismiss control and some do not; the available action follows the item type and your access. Avoid using the number on the bell as evidence that an incident has been acknowledged by every team member.

For the full customer conversation, open the case history.
For your workload, review your assigned cases and the relevant queue or saved view.
For a direct request to a colleague, use a mention with enough context and confirm acknowledgement when the commitment matters.
For an operational report, use the appropriate view, scheduled view or KPI definition rather than counting notification rows.

Clear your current notifications deliberately

Open Notifications and first review any items that might require action.
Choose Clear all. Read the confirmation: it removes your current notifications and marks active Supportbench messages as read.
Confirm only when that matches your intention. Reopen the feed to check the result.
Use your case/queue views to verify outstanding work separately. Clearing the feed is not closing cases, completing tasks or clearing another agent’s notifications.

A clean bell is not a clean queue

At shift handover, an agent may clear informational messages while still owning a case awaiting an engineering result. The case needs an explicit owner and next update time regardless of the bell count.

Build a reliable B2B support routine

Start a shift by checking assigned cases, relevant queues, urgent service commitments and the notification feed. If a customer has several contacts, open the case before responding so you know which person supplied the latest information and whether another agent already replied. One event can be part of a longer account history.

During a recurring equipment incident, a customer reply may supply a serial number while a specialist is preparing a workaround. Read the reply, update the verified case context, and coordinate with the specialist through the case. If you are assisting the owner, make that relationship explicit. A notification tells you something happened; it does not decide who should send the next customer update.

Before ending a shift, reconcile your work views with your commitments. Hand over unresolved actions through the approved workflow and identify who will update the customer. Review important messages you dismissed during the day through their underlying records where needed. This makes notifications an aid to ownership rather than a replacement for it.

Tune alert volume without hiding important work

Open your Profile → Settings → Notifications to review the notification preferences available to you. Change one setting at a time and check representative events with your team. The controls include email and queue-related preferences; they do not redefine case ownership or guarantee delivery for every notification type.

Use a team standard for which queues and cases people monitor. An agent helping one strategic customer may need different watch coverage from a rotating triage lead. Reducing noise is useful when it helps people recognize relevant work; turning off a channel without an alternative monitoring routine can leave gaps. Review Only new case activities carefully because it can also suppress direct mention creation in relevant paths.

Troubleshoot missing or confusing notifications

Situation	What to check
The Notifications bell is not available	Ask the administrator to check whether the Core Notifications utility and real-time capability are enabled for this account/session. This is different from changing an operating-system notification setting.
No brief alert appeared	Was the Core page visible and connected at the time? Open the stored feed and relevant case instead of assuming the event did not happen.
The bell and email inbox do not match	Different event/channel rules apply. Check your Email alerts preference, eligibility and mail delivery separately.
The feed does not show an older event	The feed is bounded. Inspect the underlying case history or the appropriate operational record.
A colleague saw an update that you did not	Compare the actual account, agent identity, access, watch/queue context and event type. Do not broaden customer access merely to make feeds match.
Clear all removed messages you had not opened	That action marks active Supportbench messages read. Review important operational communication through the approved source and agree a routine before clearing future items.
An item opened a case owned by someone else	A notification does not transfer ownership. Coordinate before taking over or sending a duplicate reply.
Mentions are missing	Use the separate Mentions surface and review relevant profile settings, including Only new case activities, with your administrator.
The destination cannot be opened	Check the record’s current state and your authorization. Capture the item type, approximate time and non-private error for investigation.

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