Navigating the Notification Centre

The Server Scout notification centre serves as your central hub for monitoring alert activity directly within the dashboard. It provides a quick and efficient way to review recent alerts, track their status, and stay informed about your server health without leaving the interface.

Accessing the Notification Centre

To access your notifications, simply click the bell icon in the navigation bar at the top of the dashboard. You'll notice a red badge displaying the count of unread notifications, making it easy to see at a glance when new alerts require your attention.

Understanding the Notification List

When you open the notification centre, you'll see a chronological list of recent alerts with the following information:

• Timestamp: When the alert was triggered
• Server name: Which server generated the alert
• Metric: The specific monitoring metric that triggered the alert
• Severity colour coding: Visual indicators for alert priority levels
• Brief message: A concise description of the issue

This layout allows you to quickly assess the most critical information without needing to dig deeper into individual alert details.

Read and Unread Status

Notifications follow a simple read/unread system:

• New notifications arrive marked as unread and contribute to the badge count
• Viewing a notification automatically marks it as read
• Read notifications remain visible in your history but no longer affect the unread count

This system ensures you never miss important alerts whilst keeping track of what you've already reviewed.

Filtering Your Notifications

The notification centre includes powerful filtering options to help you locate specific alerts:

1. Filter by severity level: Focus on critical alerts or review lower-priority notifications
2. Filter by server: View notifications for specific servers in your infrastructure
3. Filter by time period: Narrow down results to recent alerts or specific timeframes

These filters are particularly useful when managing multiple servers or investigating issues that occurred during specific periods.

Clearing Notifications

To maintain a clean notification centre:

1. Individual notifications are automatically marked as read when viewed
2. Use the "Mark all as read" option to clear the entire unread count at once
3. This action removes the red badge from the bell icon whilst preserving notification history

Real-Time Updates

The notification centre operates with real-time functionality:

• New notifications appear automatically without requiring page refreshes
• The notification count updates instantly when new alerts arrive
• This ensures you're always working with the most current information about your server status

You can leave the notification centre open and trust that it will stay current with your latest alert activity.

Notification History and Retention

The notification centre maintains a comprehensive history of your recent alerts:

• Recent notifications are displayed immediately in the main view
• Older entries are accessible through pagination controls
• 30-day retention: Notifications are automatically pruned after 30 days to maintain optimal performance

This retention period provides sufficient time to review and act upon alerts whilst keeping the interface responsive.

Relationship to Notification Channels

It's important to understand that the notification centre specifically handles dashboard notifications. These are separate from your configured notification channels:

• Email notifications are delivered to your specified email addresses
• Webhook notifications are sent to your configured endpoints
• Dashboard notifications appear in the notification centre

This separation allows you to maintain different notification strategies—perhaps using email for critical alerts whilst checking the notification centre for comprehensive activity reviews.

Quick Alert Activity Review

The notification centre represents the fastest way to check your recent alert activity. Rather than checking email or external systems, you can quickly assess your infrastructure's health status directly within the Server Scout dashboard. This centralised approach streamlines your monitoring workflow and ensures you maintain visibility over your server environment.