Answer a proactive update on the spot
Your Employee finishes a task and sends you an update. Instead of opening its chat, you reply from the notification drawer and your answer lands in that same thread, ready for the Employee's next wake.
Reply to Notifications
Reply straight from the notification drawer, whether it is an update from an Employee or a comment on your work, and your response goes back with the full context of what it is replying to. No need to open the chat or dig up the artifact first.
When an Employee sends you an update, or someone comments on a task or a file you own, you get a notification. Sistava lets you answer it right there, in the drawer that opens when you click the bell. You do not have to leave what you were doing, find the right chat thread, or hunt down the artifact the comment was posted on.
Open any notification and you get a reply box under the message. Type your answer and send it. For an Employee update, your reply lands in that Employee's own chat thread, the same thread the update came from, so the conversation carries on exactly where it left off. For a comment on a task, an asset, or another artifact, your reply posts as a real comment on that same thread, next to the one you are answering.
The difference from just replying in chat is context. A comment reply does not get flattened into a generic message the Employee has to guess the origin of: it lands as a comment on the exact task, file, or notification it was posted on, with that thread's full history attached. Your Employee reads it back with the surrounding discussion intact, not as an isolated line dropped into an unrelated conversation.
You can also step through your notifications without closing the drawer. Prev and next arrows move you to the next unread item, so if a few updates or comments came in while you were away, you can read and reply to each one in a single pass instead of opening and closing the bell over and over.
The bell is per workspace, not one merged pile. If you run more than one company in Sistava, each has its own feed and its own unread count, so a comment from a client project cannot land in the middle of your other business's updates. Whatever you reply to, you are replying inside the workspace it belongs to, which is what keeps the context right when the employee picks it up.
A notification is also not a permanent key to whatever it mentions. When a bell item points at something with its own access rules, such as a message in a shared inbox, your access is checked again as the item is listed and again when you open it. An old notification about a resource you have since been removed from will not hand you its contents, which is what keeps a shared workspace safe to notify people in.
The bell always fires; anything beyond it is your choice. If you have picked a primary channel for louder delivery, such as email or Slack, the same notification reaches you there too, and only through that one channel rather than every channel at once. Replying, though, happens where the full context lives: open the drawer, answer there, and it goes to the right destination.
Reply Without Losing Your Place
Notifications interrupt whatever you were doing. Without a way to reply from the notification itself, answering one means leaving your current screen, finding the Employee's chat or the artifact the comment landed on, typing your response there, then coming back to where you were. Reply from Notifications skips that detour: you answer inside the drawer the bell already opened, and Sistava sends it to the right place for you.
This matters most when several notifications arrive close together. Instead of context-switching between the bell, a chat thread, and a task page for every single one, you can open the drawer, reply, move to the next notification with the arrows, reply again, and clear the whole batch in one continuous pass.
Two Reply Paths, One Interface
An Employee update and a comment reply are different kinds of conversation, and Sistava keeps that distinction under the hood while showing you one consistent drawer. An update reply is a direct message back to that Employee, so it goes into its ongoing chat thread. A comment reply is a comment on the artifact, so it goes into that artifact's comment thread, visible to anyone else with access to the task or file.
You do not have to think about which path applies. The drawer already knows: it renders a chat-style reply box for updates and a full comment thread for comments, and either one delivers your answer with the context attached.
Scoped To The Right Workspace, Checked Every Time
Each workspace you belong to keeps its own bell feed and its own unread count. Nothing from one company shows up in another's list, so replying from the drawer always lands in the workspace the notification came from, with that workspace's employees and artifacts around it.
Access is re-checked rather than assumed. When a notification refers to something with its own permissions, the current rules are evaluated as the item is listed and again when you open it, so a bell entry never works as a back door into a resource you no longer have access to.
How It Works
One drawer, the right destination for every reply
Every notification that supports a reply, an Employee update or a comment reply, opens the same detail drawer. The drawer shows who sent it, when, and the full message rendered the same way chat messages are, so formatting, links, and lists all display correctly rather than as raw text.
Under the message sits a comment thread or a reply box, depending on the notification type. Employee updates use a lightweight text box that sends straight to that Employee's chat thread. Comment notifications, task and Drive-file comments included, mount the same comment thread component used on the artifact itself, so what you type is a genuine comment on that entity, not a side-channel message.
Either way, your reply reaches the Employee tied to real context: which artifact, which thread, which prior messages. The Employee picks it up on its next wake and can act on it with that context already loaded, instead of you having to re-explain what you are referring to.
Use Cases
Respond to a comment without leaving the bell
A teammate or Employee comments on a task you own. You reply from the notification, and it posts as a real comment on that task, visible in the same thread as the original comment.
Clear a backlog of notifications in one pass
You come back from a meeting to a stack of unread updates and comments. You open the first one, reply, then use the next arrow to move straight to the following notification without closing the drawer.
Keep two businesses from bleeding into each other
If you run more than one workspace, each keeps its own bell feed and unread count. You reply to a client's comment inside that client's workspace, with its employees and files around it, without a second company's updates landing in the same list.
Comparison
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Answering an alert means leaving the screen you were on, hunting down the right chat thread or the task it came from, and typing your reply there. | You answer inside the drawer the bell already opened, and it is routed to the right place for you. |
| Your answer arrives as a bare line in a chat, and the Employee has to work out which task or file you meant. | A comment reply posts on the exact task or file, with that thread's history sitting around it. |
| Ten unread items mean opening the bell, leaving, coming back, and opening it again, once per item. | Prev and next arrows step you through the whole batch in one pass without closing the drawer. |
| An old notification keeps working as a link into something you were removed from months ago. | Your access is checked again when the item is listed and when you open it, so it stops working when it should. |
FAQ
Where do I reply to a notification?
Click the bell icon, open the notification you want to answer, and use the reply box or comment thread at the bottom of the drawer. You do not need to navigate anywhere else first.
Does my reply reach the Employee with context, or is it just a chat message?
It depends on the notification type. Replying to an Employee update sends a message into that Employee's own chat thread, continuing the same conversation. Replying to a comment posts a real comment on the task or file the notification was about, so the Employee sees it alongside the rest of that thread's history.
Can I reply to every kind of notification?
Reply support applies to Employee updates and comment notifications, the ones that map to an ongoing conversation or a commentable artifact. System notifications like credit alerts and billing events are informational and do not carry a reply option.
Can I move to the next notification without closing the drawer?
Yes. The drawer has prev and next arrows so you can step through your recent notifications, reading and replying to each in turn, without reopening the bell for every one.
Do notifications from my different workspaces get mixed together?
No. Each workspace you belong to has its own bell feed and its own unread count, so items from one company never appear in another's list. A reply you send from the drawer stays inside the workspace the notification came from.
Do I also get these notifications by email or Slack?
The bell always fires. On top of that, one channel you have chosen as your primary loud channel, such as email or Slack, delivers the same notification, rather than every channel firing at once. Replying with full context still happens in the notification drawer.
Can I still open an old notification about a file I lost access to?
No, and that is deliberate. When a notification points at something with its own permissions, your current access is checked again as it is listed and again when you open it. An old bell entry is never treated as a standing pass to the resource it mentions.
What happens to my reply if the Employee is not running right now?
It waits for them, with its context attached. An update reply sits in that Employee's chat thread and a comment reply sits on the task or file, and either one is picked up on the Employee's next wake without you re-explaining what it refers to.
Where Reply to Notifications fits
Reply to Notifications is part of How you see what they did.
A real-time activity feed shows who is working on what right now. The step-by-step inspector traces every tool call, decision, and reasoning chain. Cost tracking breaks down spend per message, per employee, and per team. Walk through your live 3D office to see your workforce at a glance.
- How you see what they did: See everything. Miss nothing.
Read the guide
More in Monitoring
- Activity Timeline: See every piece of work your AI employees do as it happens: chat replies, scheduled runs, tool calls, delegations, and finished deliverables, all logged as activities you can open and inspect. It runs automatically for every employee with no setup, and a live feed in the workspace sidebar shows actions as they occur so you never have to wonder what is happening right now.
- Action Inspector: Click into any single activity and see exactly what your AI employee did: the model call pipeline, every tool it used with inputs and outputs, cost broken down by category, a duration waterfall, and the plan it followed. Available from the Activity tab, from Inspect on any chat message, or from the sidebar timeline.
- See What Your Employee Is Told: Open any activity in the Activity Inspector and read the exact system prompt your AI employee received for that run: every instruction, every tool definition, and the manifest of which skills and duties were loaded and why. Nothing paraphrased, nothing summarized, the same text the model saw.
- Credit Usage History: See exactly where your monthly credits go: split spend from direct employee requests and automation or system work, then inspect every charged system operation, including AI work, tools, Officer checks, knowledge, voice, meetings, video, and email. A burn chart shows the trend over time, and a separate grants table lists every bonus credit you received from promos, referrals, or purchases, with source and date.
- Spending Limit: Set a ceiling on how many credits your workforce can spend per hour, day, week, or month, so a runaway task or a busy day never turns into a surprise bill.
- Team Dashboards: Every team gets its own dashboard the moment you open it: team health, the current sprint, work in flight, momentum, objectives, and KPI progress, all built from data the platform already has. On the Custom plan, connect data sources and the same dashboard adds Revenue & Pipeline, Demand & Conversion, and Reach & Engagement cards for that team.
- Data Export: Every workspace surface that shows your history, chat threads, the task board, activity logs, and Drive files, has its own download control that exports the current, filtered view as Markdown, CSV, or JSON. Use it to pull records for an audit, share a run outside the app, or keep an offline copy of what an employee produced.
- Review the Quality of Every Deliverable: After an employee does real work, a quality reviewer scores each deliverable against a standard and shows the verdict in the activity inspector. Everyday chat is left alone, so you only grade real output.
- 3D Office View: A workforce of AI employees is easy to lose track of as a list of chat threads. The 3D Office View turns it into a place: every employee is a character at a desk, hot-desk, or the lounge, moving between them live as their status changes, so you can see your whole company working at a glance instead of clicking through tabs.
- In-App Notifications: See the moment an Employee finishes work, needs a decision from you, or your credit balance runs low, through a bell icon in your workspace that always fires. Reply straight from the notification drawer for Employee updates and comment threads, and control which events also reach your email through a short list of categories.
- Email Notifications: Sistava emails you when an employee finishes work, needs your approval, hits a blocker, or your credit balance runs low, so nothing important gets stuck waiting for you to open the app. You choose which categories of email you want; account security and billing mail stay on because they carry information you need regardless of your other preferences.
- Email Digest Notifications: A rolled-up email that summarizes what your AI employees did over a set period, instead of a separate message for every event. Today, notification email in Sistava sends per event and per category (employee updates, task completion, credit alerts, and so on); a digest option that batches those into one scheduled email is planned but not built yet.