Foundation · Module 16

Notifications

Never Miss a Hand-Off Again

A "hot lead" is a potential customer who's ready to buy right now. If one gets assigned to a rep on Friday afternoon, it shouldn't sit unseen until Monday. How SmartLite's in-app alerts — little pop-up messages inside the app — close that gap.

⏱ ~6 min to complete80 pts available🏅 Badge: Response Time Champion

About & Business Case #

Why notifications matter #

Taylor Diaz · Sales Director

"A rep was assigned a hot lead Friday afternoon and didn't open it until Monday morning. A competitor called first. That lead — and the deal — was gone before we even got a chance."

If work gets assigned but nobody notices, it might as well not have been assigned at all. A CRM shouldn't just quietly store important events. It needs to actively speak up and alert the right person.

What this means for you

Hand-offs — moments when work passes from one person to another — get seen within minutes, not days. Nothing important slips through just because it arrived at the wrong time.

Implementation #

Anatomy of a notification #

Look for the bell icon near the top of the app — it shows how many unread notifications you have. A "record" is one single entry in SmartLite, like one Lead or one Opportunity (a deal in progress). SmartLite creates a notification automatically whenever one of these events happens:

Trigger (what happens)	Who receives it
A new record is created	The record's owner (if that's a different person from whoever created it)
A Workflow Rule's "Notification" action runs — a Workflow Rule is an automatic action SmartLite takes when certain conditions are met	Whichever people that Workflow Rule was set up to notify
An approval request is submitted — for example, a discount that needs a manager's sign-off	The approver(s) responsible for the current step
An approval is approved or rejected	The person who originally submitted the record

Scoped to you, and only you

Every notification is tied to your username and your company's account. You'll only ever see notifications addressed to you, inside your own organization — never anyone else's.

1 Trigger and clear a notification #

Assign a record to a teammateOpen any Lead or Opportunity and change its "Owner" field to another user in your org.

Log in as that teammateCheck the bell icon in the top navigation bar — the unread count should have gone up by one.

Open the notificationClick the bell. The notification takes you straight to the record you just assigned.

Mark it readClick "Mark all as read" on the Notifications page, and confirm the unread count clears to zero.

Go further

Try building a Workflow Rule with a Notification action (see the Workflow Automation trail). Watch a notification appear the moment your conditions are met — with no ownership change needed at all.

How to Use #

Day-to-day: everyone #

Check the bell first thingStart your day by clearing anything waiting for you, rather than stumbling onto it later.

Click through instead of searchingClicking a notification takes you straight to the record — no need to hunt for it in a list.

What to try next

Look at the Workflow Automation trail to trigger notifications from your own custom conditions, not just record hand-offs.

Quiz #

Test what you learned #

1. Does SmartLite send notifications the instant they happen, over a connection that stays open all the time?

Yes, through a live connection that's always open

No — the app checks for new notifications every so often

2. When an approval request is rejected, who gets a notification about it?

Every user in the org

The person who originally submitted the record for approval

Only the system administrator