Notifications & Announcements
The inbox that tells you what needs you, and the way you reach your team.
BenchOS has two related surfaces: notifications, which BenchOS raises for you, and announcements, which you send to your program. Both land in the same inbox.
The bell
The bell in the top bar carries an unread count and opens the most recent items. Notifications in the sidebar (or clicking through the bell) shows the full inbox.
Each notification carries a link to whatever it's about, so a "Game without a pre-brief" goes straight to that game rather than to a list.
What BenchOS notifies you about
| Notification | Raised when |
|---|---|
| Practice today | A practice is on today's schedule |
| Practice without a plan | A practice is coming up with no plan attached |
| Game today | A game is on today's schedule |
| Game without a pre-brief | A game is coming up with no pre-brief |
| Practice feedback due | A finalized practice hasn't been rated |
| Game feedback due | A game result is recorded but has no feedback |
| Development week started | A player's dev plan moved into a new week |
| Development plan ending | A dev plan is within a week of its end date |
| Weekly report due | The week has enough data to synthesize |
| Generation complete / failed | An AI generation you started finished, or didn't |
| New member joined | Someone accepted an invitation |
| Announcements | A coach sent a message to your program |
Each one fires once per thing it's about — a practice without a plan notifies you about that practice, not every day until you write one.
Choosing what reaches you
Settings → Notifications has a row per notification type and two independent switches: in-app and email. Turn off email for generation results and keep it for feedback due, or turn off everything except announcements — the grid is yours.
Announcements are the one exception: they always appear in-app. A coach broadcasting to the team can't be opted out of in the app itself, though you can still turn off the email.
Every notification email carries an unsubscribe link that works without signing in.
Announcements
If you can send announcements, Notifications shows a composer above your inbox.
Write a title and a body, choose an audience — everyone, coaches only, or players only — and BenchOS tells you how many people that reaches before you send. It lands in each recipient's inbox immediately, and by email for anyone who has that on.
Announcements are for the things that don't belong in a plan: bus times, a moved practice, what to bring Friday.
The history
Below the composer is a record of everything your program has sent — the message, its audience, how many people it reached, and which coach sent it.
The history is program-wide rather than personal, so you can see that another coach already told the team about Friday's bus an hour ago.
An announcement can't be un-sent. There's no edit and no delete — the history is the record of what your program actually said. Read it back before you send.
Who can do what
Receiving announcements is universal: anyone in your program gets the ones addressed to them.
Sending is staff-only and can't be granted to players under any setting — an announcement reaches every membership at once, and that's not a capability a per-program permission should be able to hand out. Coaches and admins can send by default; see User Management to change who else can.