What it does
The inbox is a single personal list of everything waiting on you across the platform — approvals to decide, items to review, notices to read, and conversation references. Each entry shows a title, supporting context, and an urgency level, and links directly to the place where the work actually happens.
Who it's for
Everyone who signs in can have an inbox: learners, supervising faculty, coordinators, advisors, and administrators. You only ever see items addressed to you or items you are following because you sent or routed them.
How it works
Items arrive in your inbox automatically when something elsewhere in the platform needs you — the inbox itself never invents work. Each item is one of three types: something to act on (such as an approval), an informational notice, or a reference to a conversation. Items carry an urgency level from low to urgent, and the list orders the most urgent items first, newest first within the same urgency.
Items are organized into four groups:
To do — open items waiting on you. Snoozed items are hidden here until their snooze time passes.
Waiting on — items you routed to someone else that are still undecided.
Sent — items you requested that have since been decided.
Recently done — items involving you that have been resolved.
An item tracks two things separately: whether you have seen it, and whether the underlying work is done. Marking an item as seen clears it from your unread indicators, but the item stays open until the originating workflow records a decision — approved, denied, or completed. When that happens, the item leaves To do on its own.
The platform also keeps a count of your open To do items so surfaces that show the inbox can tell at a glance whether anything is waiting, and it updates in real time: when a new item arrives or an existing one is decided, the change is reflected immediately.
Boundaries and limits
The inbox is not yet available as a screen you can visit in the product. It is the platform's underlying routing system for action items; items are created and resolved by the platform's workflows, and this article describes how that system behaves.
You cannot create an inbox item manually — items are only created by the platform when something genuinely needs you, and their title, context, and urgency come from the originating workflow.
You cannot decide an item from inside the inbox list itself. Decisions (approve, deny, complete) are recorded by the feature the item links to, and the inbox reflects the result.
You cannot change an item's urgency, reword it, or reassign it to someone else.
The unread badge counts only open To do items; items in Waiting on, Sent, and Recently done never affect the badge.
Snoozed items are excluded from the badge count and from the default To do view until their snooze time passes.
The Waiting on and Sent groups only show items where the platform recorded you as the requester or router; you cannot follow an arbitrary item by choice.
Common questions
Q: Why is an item still in my To do list after I read it? A: Seen and done are tracked separately. Marking an item seen clears your unread indicators, but the item leaves To do only when the underlying work is decided or completed.
Q: Can I add my own reminders or tasks to the inbox? A: No. The inbox only lists items the platform routed to you. For personal reminders, use the tools in the feature the work belongs to.
Q: What is the difference between Waiting on and Sent? A: Waiting on shows items you routed to someone else that are still open. Sent shows items you requested that have already been decided.
Q: Who else can see my inbox items? A: The recipient of an item, plus anyone the platform recorded as following it — typically the person who requested or routed it. There is no shared team inbox.
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