What the bell is
The panel bell (top right) alerts you when a conversation needs human attention. It works the same for every channel: WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Email and web chatbots.
When it rings — and when it deliberately does not
The core rule is simple: the bell only rings when a person is needed. If your AI Agent is handling the conversation, the message lands silently in the inbox and the bot replies — notifying you about every message the AI is already resolving would just be noise.
| Situation | Notifies? | Who |
|---|---|---|
| The AI is answering the conversation | ❌ No | — (message lands in the inbox, bot replies) |
| Conversation assigned to a human agent | ✅ Yes | The assigned agent |
| AI paused or conversation in handoff (human control) | ✅ Yes | The assigned agent |
| Unassigned conversation with no active AI | ✅ Yes | Workspace owners, admins and supervisors |
This also applies to the Email channel: if you connect a mailbox with an active AI Agent, emails are answered automatically without notifying you. The bell rings when the email requires human intervention (for example, when you have taken over the thread or the AI is paused).
No spam: one notification per conversation
Notifications are grouped per conversation: if a customer sends five messages in a row (or five emails to the same thread), you don't get five alerts — you see a single notification with a counter ("You have 5 new messages").
Managing notifications
- Clicking a notification → marks it as read, removes it from the panel and opens the conversation (in the unified inbox for channels, or in the chatbot panel for web chatbots).
- Opening the conversation directly from the inbox also clears its notifications — and while the chat is open, no new alerts are generated for that conversation.
- Mark all as read — link at the bottom of the notification panel.
- Preferences — you can enable or disable notification types from your agent profile.