Notifications (the bell)
Notifications (the bell)
The bell in the top bar is a deliberately short list — only things that need your attention: problems, health issues, and decisions you need to make. It is not a feed of everything that happens (that would bury the one thing that matters). Day-to-day activity — users added to groups, routine syncs — lives in the activity feed and the logs, which you look at when you choose. The bell is the opposite: it comes to you when something is wrong.
What appears here
- Sync problems — the last sync run failed, or recent runs reported accounts that didn't sync. Provisioning changes may not be reaching Google or Microsoft, so this is surfaced straight away.
- Orphaned classrooms — Google Classrooms whose owner is no longer active and need a decision (grouped: one entry per school, e.g. "12 orphaned classrooms", not twelve separate alerts).
- The provisioning window — when sync is frozen for the summer and needs the new-year window set to resume.
- Pre-admission setup — pre-admission is switched on but no admission year is set.
- Re-save your default password — for older schools whose saved default password is held in a one-way format we can't read back. It still resets users in the app, and nothing is out of sync; it only means a future reset to the default wouldn't reach your directory, so that account would keep the password it already has there. It appears only if your school actually pushes passwords to a platform, and names the ones affected. Re-saving the default under School settings → Password fixes future resets (and clears the notice on its own). See Reset passwords.
- Roll your AD intake years forward — only for schools whose on-prem Active Directory places students by intake year (never year-group schools). It appears during the summer freeze, ahead of your resume date, as a reminder to add the new September intake and roll the intake-year mapping forward — otherwise the new Year 7 gets created in the wrong OU (or not at all) the moment sync resumes. It shows your real resume date and current intake years, gets more urgent the closer resume gets, and clears itself once you've rolled them forward.
- Health — the provisioning scheduler hasn't run for a while, which can mean sync has stalled.
What does NOT appear here
Routine activity — a user created, a group membership changed, a normal successful sync. That's what the activity feed and logs are for. Keeping the bell to exceptions is what makes it worth looking at.
How it behaves
- The number on the bell is how many items need attention. It turns red when something critical is included (a failing sync, a stalled scheduler) and amber otherwise.
- Click any item to jump straight to where you fix it — the sync dashboard, the orphaned-classrooms page, the end-of-year window, and so on. In a multi-school trust it switches to the right school first.
- Items clear themselves. There's nothing to tick off: once the underlying issue is resolved (the sync succeeds, the orphans are actioned, the window is set), the notification simply disappears on its own. It never nags about something already fixed.
- Scope. In a single school you see that school's items; in trust (MAT) mode you see every school you're authorised for, each labelled with its name.
Get them by email
Because you're not signed in all day, you can also have a digest emailed to you. Go to My profile → Notifications (there's a prompt on your dashboard until you've set this up) and choose:
- Email me a digest — on or off.
- How often — a daily or weekly summary.
- What to email me about — critical problems only, or anything needing attention.
A digest is only ever emailed when there's actually something to report, so it never becomes noise. It's the same list as the bell, so email and the app always agree. Change or turn off the emails any time from the same place.
The dashboard prompt disappears as soon as you've made a choice — including choosing to leave email off. It's just making sure you've decided.
Who sees it
The bell is for admins. Mentors and learners don't see it.
Looking for Smart Parents notices instead? This bell is about problems with ADAdmin itself (sync, orphaned classrooms, the provisioning window). Sending a notice to parents — e.g. a note about a trip or a closure — is a separate feature. See Add a parent notice.