Notify someone from a workflow
Tell a person that something needs them, without making it their task — and without training them to ignore you.
Notify and create-task look interchangeable and are not. Notify is for awareness; a task is for obligation. If somebody must do something, create a task — it has a due time and it can be seen to be outstanding. If somebody should merely know, notify.
Confusing the two produces alert fatigue, and alert fatigue is permanent: once somebody has learned to dismiss your notifications, they dismiss the important one too.
Steps
Add a notify step and choose who
One person, ideally.
A notification sent to five people is a notification nobody owns, and the diffusion of responsibility is immediate. If several people need to know, ask whether what you want is a task with one owner.
Use notify for awareness, tasks for obligation
"A high-value lead just came in" is awareness. "Call this lead back before noon" is an obligation.
Notify one person, not everybody
A notification to five people is a notification nobody owns. Diffusion of responsibility is real and it is fast.
Say why it matters in the message
"High-value enquiry unanswered for 20 minutes" is actionable. "Workflow triggered" is noise, and noise is what people learn to filter.
Pair it with escalation rather than repetition
Notify the assignee, then after fifteen minutes reassign to their manager. That is better than notifying the same person three times.
Review after a fortnight
Ask the recipient whether they still read them. If they do not, the condition is too loose — tighten it or remove the step. An unread notification is a step you are paying for and getting nothing from.
Check it worked
Ask whoever receives these notifications one question: have you ever acted on one? If the answer is no, either the condition is wrong or the step should be a task.
The parts people get wrong
- Notifications land in the notification feed alongside template approvals, mentions and workflow failures.
- Every notify step consumes an automation action, so an unread notification is a recurring cost with no return.