15 min read

Notification tips and tricks

Transform notifications from noisy alerts into a powerful signal system that better supports collaboration and more efficient workflows.

Coda’s notification system helps keep teams informed and aligned by surfacing changes, updates, and actions at just the right moment—without overwhelming inboxes or disrupting focus. This guide shares practical tips and best practices for setting up notifications in more impactful ways, choosing the right channels (such as email or Slack), and using doc-level settings and automations to ensure your team only sees what’s truly relevant to them. By following these guidelines, you can transform notifications from noisy alerts into a powerful signal system that supports better collaboration, faster responses, and more efficient workflows.

What's covered

Notification Settings
Notification Packs
Buttons
Automation

What you'll use

Account Settings
Tables
Automation
Packs

1. What are notifications?

In Coda, notifications are alerts that keep you up to date on what’s happening in your docs, without requiring you to constantly check them. They’re triggered by activity that matters to you, like someone assigning you a task, mentioning you in a comment, updating a row you’re watching, running an automation that you’re linked to, and more. Depending on your preferences, these updates can appear in Coda’s notification center, be sent via email, or be connected to tools like Slack. Together, they act as a personalized signal system that surfaces only the changes and actions you care about, so you can respond quickly and stay aligned with your team.

2. Notification tips and tricks

You’re no stranger to notifications - not in today’s digital workspace. That said, Coda has notification features and settings that can transform noisy alerts into more meaningful touch points. Want to receive notifications outside of Coda? Follow the steps in the video below.

For your convenience, instructions on customizing your Coda notification settings are also written out in the sections below.

Edit your notification preferences

Your notification settings in Coda are the foundation for ensuring your alerts reach you. If notifications are turned off in your account settings, updates will only appear in the in-app bell icon and won’t be sent to your email. By confirming your email preferences, you ensure that important comments, mentions, and automation updates are delivered directly to your inbox, so you don’t miss critical activity in your docs. To ensure notification settings allow notifications outside Coda’s platform, take the following actions:

In Coda, select your user profile in the lower-right corner of your browser.
Choose Account Settings.
Scroll down to Email Settings.
Confirm ‘Strictly Business’ settings are enabled.

This will allow email notifications to be sent, in addition to Coda alerts, when triggered.

Use notification connections

Coda can further streamline your notification workflows by connecting your docs to the tools where your team already lives, like Slack. Instead of manually copying updates or relying solely on in-app alerts, you can use this connection to automatically send tailored messages, summaries, or alerts to the right channels at the right time, delivering notifications in the most natural place for your teammates. To enable these connections, take the following actions:

In Coda, select your user profile in the lower-right corner of your browser.
Choose Account Settings.
Scroll down to Contact and notification integrations.
Select Connect next to your desired connection, like Slack.
Follow the on screen prompts to log-in and connect your new notification delivery method.

Completing these steps will allow our notifications to reach you in a different application, in addition to Coda and email (if enabled).

Automate notifications

Automated notification workflows in Coda ensure the right people are informed at exactly the right moments, without anyone needing to manually send updates or chase status. By tying notifications to specific triggers, like a status change, due date, or button click, teams can reliably surface important changes while reducing busywork and human error. It not only keeps projects moving forward with fewer delays but also creates a clear, repeatable communication pattern that scales with your docs and collaborators.

When possible, opt to create automated buttons

Setting up automations can be simple: Coda prompts you to establish a when, an if, and a then. These parameters establish the guardrails for automations to run within. A common example might be notifying a specific user daily whenever changes occur to a table or project tracker.

All this automation can be set in your document settings. However, creating a button in your canvas or table, giving it a clear action, and automating it can be the simplest and most future-proof approach to creating automations.

Buttons exist in your document and aren’t hidden in document settings, and can be edited by others with editing permissions in the event of your absence.
Buttons handle actions (if/then) with less complexity and can be automated separately, making them ideal for building, testing, and refining.
Buttons can be more approachable for collaborators of all experience levels.

Opting to leverage buttons will be the clearest path to clear actions and scalable automation. You can create a button either on the document canvas for general use or within a table for more specific, row-level actions. For more detailed instructions on creating table-based notification buttons, consider reviewing the dedicated guide Create automated buttons.

View notifications by doc

Reviewing notifications by document gives people a focused view of what’s changed in a single workspace, without extra noise from other docs. It makes it easier to track edits, comments, and decisions in context, especially for high-traffic docs where teams rely on a single source of truth. Learn how to do this with our brief video tutorial, linked below, or with our written steps in the next sub-section.

To filter down on document-specific notifications, take the following actions:

Select the notification bell icon in the top left corner of your screen.
Underneath the Notifications header, select This doc.

This will change your notification view to only items from the document you are viewing.

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