Your notifications
The bell in the top bar holds the alerts sent to you — a job marked complete, a customer request, an IBS file that didn't send. Read them, follow them, and choose whether they also reach your email.
Meridian sends some alerts to a particular person rather than showing them to everyone: a line marked complete on a ticket you wrote, a new customer portal request for the people who triage them, an IBS funding file that didn't reach IBS for the people who handle IBS. Those land in your notifications, behind the bell in the top bar. Nobody else sees yours.
Look for the bell. It sits in the top bar, next to the ? help button, on a computer and on a phone. The number on it is how many you haven't read yet. It turns red only while one of them is urgent. When a new urgent or warning notification arrives while you're working, a message pops up in the corner with a button to go straight to it. An urgent one stays there until you close it or follow it.
Open it. Click the bell. A panel slides in from the right with your notifications, unread ones first and marked with a dot, urgent ones at the very top. Urgent ones are tagged Urgent and shaded red, and show their whole message; warnings are tagged Warning. Each shows when it arrived; hover the time for the exact date and time. Long messages have Show more.
Go to what it's about. Most notifications have a link under them — Review, Go to this file, Open. Click it to go straight to the ticket, request or file. That marks the notification read and closes the panel.
Mark them read. Each notification has Mark read (or Mark unread, to keep one on your list). Mark all read above the list marks everything you can see, and the message that confirms it has Undo in case you tapped it by mistake; one that arrives while the panel is open stays unread. Older notifications load with Show older at the bottom.
Choose about email. Some notifications are also sent to the email address you sign in with — the kind that need action even when you're away from the screen: a new customer portal request (to the people who triage them), a DVIR that puts a unit out of service (to owners and managers), an online parts order waiting to be accepted (to the people who review them), a nightly QuickBooks Desktop export that failed (to owners, managers and accounting), plus vendor follow-ups waiting for review and Foreman's results. The Email me at … switch at the bottom of the panel shows that address and turns those emails off (or back on) for you alone. Off means none are emailed, urgent ones included. They still come to the bell either way.
What happens behind the scenes
The bell checks for new notifications about once a minute while Meridian is open in front of you, and straight away when you come back to the tab. A screen nobody has touched for 15 minutes stops checking until someone uses it again, so a counter PC left on overnight doesn't keep asking. Those are the usual times; your plan may set them differently, for example so a screen left on keeps checking every few minutes. A change reaches an open screen the next time it loads a page.
An emailed notification goes out once, worded the way your shop set it up (an owner can change the wording under Settings → Customer emails & texts → Alerts to your own staff, as Notification by email). If your shop has quiet hours, the email waits until they end — except for urgent ones, which go straight away.
Troubleshooting
The count updates about once a minute. Open the panel and it refreshes immediately.
Check that Email me is on in the notification panel. Not every notification is emailed — only the ones meant to reach you away from the screen — and an email held by your shop's quiet hours goes out when they end.