troubleshooting · how to

Notifications are missing

Diagnose and recover when notifications are missing needs attention.

Someone expected a Slack DM, channel card, or App Home update for an approval, publishing failure, inbox assignment, or digest, and nothing arrived. Notifications follow the underlying work item. If the record never reached the state that triggers an alert, no message will send.

Prerequisites

The triggering event should have happened: a post submitted for review, a job failed, an inbox item created, a conversation assigned, or a similar workflow step. You need access to Settings for notification preferences and routing when those controls apply to your workspace.

Symptoms

You see one or more of these patterns:

  • An approver never received a DM or channel card for a pending approval.
  • A publishing failure occurred but no failure alert reached the team.
  • An inbox assignment or reply notification did not reach the assignee.
  • App Home did not update when someone expected a visible refresh instead of a DM.
  • One user receives alerts but another does not for the same event type.

Likely causes

  1. Missing or wrong workflow state: The item is not in the state that triggers the alert (for example still a draft, not yet submitted for review).
  2. Wrong brand: The active brand does not match the item that should have triggered the notification.
  3. Notification preferences: Quiet hours, digest mode, snooze, or a disabled alert type delayed or suppressed a non-critical message.
  4. Routing: Approval or publishing routes point to a channel the recipient cannot read.
  5. Channel context: The recipient expected a DM but the route posts to a channel card, or App Home needed a manual refresh.
  6. Shared-channel approvals: A client or shared-channel approval route is no longer connected.

Critical alert types such as publishing failures, approval requests, billing notices, security alerts, system errors, and admin workflow blockers are expected to bypass user preference suppression. Slack workspace permissions, routing mistakes, or delivery outages can still block them.

Fix it

Step 1: Confirm the event still exists

  1. Type /social and check Workflow, Create, or Inbox for the item that should have triggered the alert.
  2. Confirm the active brand matches the item.
  3. Open My Work or /social-approve when the missing alert was an approval request.
  4. Open Inbox from App Home or the Command Palette when the missing alert was inbox-related.

If the item is not in the expected state, complete or fix the workflow step first. Notifications follow the record.

Step 2: Review notification preferences

  1. Type /social, choose Settings, then Notifications or Notification preferences.
  2. Confirm the alert type is enabled for the recipient.
  3. Check quiet hours, digest mode, and snooze settings. Digest and quiet hours delay non-critical alerts. Snooze pauses routine alerts until the snooze window ends.
  4. Save changes and wait for the next event of the same type before you retest.

Step 3: Check routing and channel context

  1. Confirm approval and publishing routes point to channels the recipient can read.
  2. Ask the recipient to open App Home and refresh when they expected an App Home update instead of a DM.
  3. For client or shared-channel approvals, confirm the shared channel is still connected.

See Put social decisions back in the right channel for acting on work from channel cards when DMs are delayed.

Step 4: Retest with a fresh event

After preferences and routes are correct, trigger a new event of the same type (for example submit another test post for review). Watch the configured channel and the recipient DM within a few minutes.

Confirm the fix

The next alert of the same type arrives in Slack within a few minutes. Recipients see channel cards or DMs matching the routes you configured. App Home reflects the updated work item when that is the expected surface.

Prevention

  • Keep approval and publishing routes pointed at channels the whole team can access.
  • Document which alert types are critical so admins do not disable them by mistake.
  • After routing changes, run one test approval or failure recovery in a sandbox brand.

Escalate

Contact support when critical failure or approval alerts never arrive for any user after preferences are enabled and routes are correct, or when an entire workspace stopped receiving alerts at once.

Include:

  • Workspace name
  • Brand name
  • Alert type (approval, publishing failure, inbox assignment, digest, and similar)
  • Recipient Slack user or channel
  • Approximate time the triggering event occurred
  • Whether the underlying item is visible in Workflow, Create, or Inbox