NotifyContext

NotifyContext is a note between colleagues with an explicit acknowledgement. You send an FYI, a request for review, or a request for action. The body is Markdown. Recipients get an inbox in the browser and a backlog their assistant can read.

The note can point at a document, a task, a record, or a URL. Finishing the underlying work stays in the app that owns that work.

Send, then acknowledge

flowchart LR
  sender[Sender]
  note[Notification<br/>subject and body frozen]
  recip[Recipient state]
  sender --> note --> recip

sequenceDiagram
  participant S as Sender
  participant N as NotifyContext
  participant R as Recipient

  S->>N: publish, with a submission key
  N-->>S: the notification id
  R->>N: open the inbox
  Note over R,N: opening it does not mark it read
  R->>N: mark read, or acknowledge with an optional note
  N-->>S: sender can see that state

Acknowledgement means the person received it and understood it. It does not mean the task is done.

The subject and body stay as published. A correction is a new notification. Withdrawing needs a reason. Retrying the same publish with the same submission key returns the original. A changed body with the same key conflicts.

You can address a colleague who has an account, or an email in the Workspace domain that does not yet. That second case waits up to 30 days for their first Google sign-in. No invitation email is sent, and no placeholder login is created.

Who sees what

flowchart TD
  note[One notification]
  note --> senderView[Sender sees every recipient's state]
  note --> ownView[Recipient sees only their own state]

Reading with SQL does not mark anything read. Administrators do not get a privacy bypass over ordinary inboxes.

The browser has Inbox, Sent, and Archived, plus a sidebar search. The favicon shows the unread count. Desktop alerts need permission and an open tab. There is no mobile push in this version.

Availability (available, busy, in a meeting, away) is visible to colleagues. Pausing alerts is private. Neither one stops delivery.