How Do Community Notifications Work?

Thinkific Communities send notifications across four channels — email, web, mobile, and push — so members stay informed about activity in their community. Which notifications a member receives depends on their role and how they interact with posts.

Notification Types

Community Notifications allow you and your members to stay connected by notifying them about new and relevant conversations in their communities! They help you build a thriving community through active conversations, lively discussions, and new connections. 

There are four types of notifications, each described below.

Email Notifications

Email notifications are sent to the community members' email addresses. 

Emails from Thinkific are sent from noreply@notify.thinkific.com or notifications@notify.thinkific.com. If you are using Email White Labelling, students will receive emails from the custom email domain you have set up with Thinkific.

Web notifications

Web notifications appear in the notification bell icon in the top-right corner of your site header or the Learner Hub. A red dot on the bell indicates unread notifications. Clicking a notification takes the member directly to the relevant post.

Mobile notifications

Mobile notifications are accessible in the notifications section of the Thinkific Mobile app or your Branded app.

Push notifications

Push notifications appear on a member's device if they have the Thinkific Mobile App or a Branded Mobile App installed and push notifications enabled on their device. Learn more: Engage Students in the Mobile App.

Notifications Triggers

1:Many notifications notify all members of a space and are triggered when:

• an admin creates a new post
• someone uses @space

These are delivered as web, mobile, and push notifications only — not email.

1:1 notifications notify a specific member and are triggered when:

• New activity happens in the post they followed or interacted with by reacting to the post or to any reply within it, commenting on the post, or replying to a comment will all start following that post.
• Someone @mentions them in a post or comment
• Someone comments on their post
• Someone replies to their comment
• They are added to a community

1:1 notifications are delivered across all channels: email, web, mobile, and push.

Notification Settings by Role

Site Owners and Site Admins

Site Owners and Site Admins are automatically added as followers to new posts and receive an email when a new post is created. Both behaviours can be turned off:

1. From your Admin Dashboard, go to Users
2. Select Notification Emails
3. Select the Admin Notifications tab
4. Click the Student Engagement section on the left
5. Under Communities, toggle off the relevant settings:
   1. New posts: Receive an email when someone creates a new post in a community
   2. Auto-follow new posts: Keep track of new posts and comments as they are created

Updates to these settings will apply to the Site Owner and all Site Admins. We do not currently have the option to customize this per Site Admin. For more granular control per user, make sure to turn your notifications on and simply follow or unfollow specific posts!

Community Moderators

Community Moderators receive email notifications for new posts, @mentions, replies, and the weekly digest for all communities they are assigned to by default. To turn these off:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to My Dashboard.
3. Select your name in the top-right corner.
4. In the dropdown, select My Account.
5. Click Notifications.
6. Uncheck Receive email notifications for mentions, replies, and posts, and subscribe to the weekly digest.
7. Click Save Changes.

Students

Students are automatically added as followers to their own posts and receive notifications for activity on posts they follow. To turn off all community notifications, students can do so from within a community or from their account settings. See: How can students turn off email notifications?

Note that you must be on Site Builder theme version 1.18.0 or higher for students to see the option to disable Community notifications from their general account settings. On earlier theme versions, they will still be able to turn off notifications within the Community.

Important Considerations

• The notification bell is only visible if you have at least one community on your site. 
• The notification centre is not accessible within the Course Player. 
• Site Admin notification settings apply to all Site Admins and cannot be set per individual admin. 
• If a member edits a post and adds an @mention as part of the edit, the mentioned member receives a web notification only but no email.
• @space space-wide mention notifications will send a notification to all users in the space. Learn more: How to Notify Everyone in a Community Space.
• Members will receive notifications for any post they followed manually or interacted with by reacting to the post or to any reply within it, commenting on the post, or replying to a comment will all start following that post. Members can manually unfollow posts to stop receiving notifications about updates on that post.

Frequently Asked Questions