Choose which emails Conterminal sends you
Conterminal sends several unrelated kinds of mail, and only one of them is controlled by the checkboxes in Settings. This article names each notification type, shows which switch governs it, and explains why a colleague can receive mail that never reaches you.
7 minute read · Updated July 26, 2026
One panel does not control everything.
The Notifications panel in Settings governs the workspace notification types listed below. Watchlist status-change mail, Hot Load mail, and tracking-note mail are separate systems with their own triggers and no checkbox in that panel.
Notification types and triggers
These are the workspace notification types you can switch on or off for yourself. Each one writes an in-app notification record and, for everyone subscribed, sends an email.
- Approaching Dem.
- Container is close to demurrage charges.
- Incurring Dem.
- Container is currently incurring demurrage charges.
- Approaching Det.
- Container is close to detention charges.
- Incurring Det.
- Container is currently incurring detention charges.
- Linkage Review
- A delivery order needs manual linkage review.
- Linkage Resolved
- A delivery-order linkage review was resolved.
- Invite Sent
- A collaboration invite was sent to another organization.
- Invite Accepted
- A collaboration invite was accepted.
- Schedule Proposed
- A delivery appointment time was proposed.
- Schedule Accepted
- A delivery appointment time was accepted.
- Schedule Rejected
- A delivery appointment proposal was rejected.
- Schedule Capacity
- A delivery appointment proposal was voided because dock capacity filled.
What raises each one
Turning a type on does not create the alert. Something in the system has to raise it first.
- Demurrage and detention. LongShorty evaluates linked containers against notification rules held for your workspace. Approaching Dem. fires when the Last Free Day is still ahead but inside the rule's threshold in days; Incurring Dem. fires when measured demurrage exposure days exceed the threshold. The detention pair works the same way against the empty-return deadline and detention exposure days. The same delivery order and type are not re-notified within 24 hours.
- Linkage Review. A delivery-order document finishes ingest in a state that needs manual linkage review. Linkage Resolved fires when an admin resolves that review.
- Collaboration invites. Invite Sent fires when your workspace sends an invite to another organization; Invite Accepted fires when the other side accepts.
- Delivery scheduling. Schedule Proposed, Schedule Accepted, and Schedule Rejected fire when an appointment is proposed, accepted, countered, or declined — including from the external appointment link a warehouse contact opens without signing in. Schedule Capacity fires when an acceptance is voided because dock capacity filled first.
The demurrage and detention thresholds live in notification rules, not in a settings screen. There is no page in the app for editing them, so ask Conterminal Support if a threshold is wrong or if the alerts are not firing at all for your workspace.
Platform LongShorty alerts
4 further types exist for LongShorty runtime health: LongShorty P0, LongShorty Warning, LongShorty Critical, Credential Expiring. These are platform-scoped, not workspace-scoped. They are managed for platform admins on the LongShorty Monitoring Alert management screen and never appear in your workspace Settings.
Setting your preferences, per workspace
- Open Settings. Go to your workspace Settings and scroll to the Notifications panel, which is the last panel on the page. On a narrow screen the panels are shown one at a time: pick Notifications from the Settings area list first.
- Tick what you want. Every type shows a checkbox labeled Enabled. The subheading reads “Choose which workspace email updates should include you.”
- Save. Press Save Notifications. A confirmation banner reads “Notifications saved / Your email notification preferences were updated.” A failure banner reads “Could not save notifications / Please try again.”
- Check the count. On a wide screen the summary strip at the top of Settings shows Notifications — N enabled, which is a quick way to confirm the save landed.
Preferences are per workspace, not per person.
A preference row is keyed to workspace, user, and notification type. If you belong to more than one workspace, each one has its own set of checkboxes, and switching your active workspace does not carry your choices across. Set them again in every workspace where you want mail.
Saving writes a row for every type on the list, including the ones you left unticked, so an unticked box is a recorded “no” rather than an absence. Until you save at least once, the panel shows every type as disabled and you are not a subscriber to any of them.
The emails you receive
Four different senders reach your inbox. Knowing which is which saves a lot of time when you are trying to work out why a message arrived.
Workspace notifications, from hello@conterminal.com
This is the mail the Settings checkboxes control. The subject is the type label, then the workspace name — for example Incurring Dem. · Acme Logistics. The body carries the notification message and an Open Conterminal> button.
Watchlist status changes, from alerts@conterminal.com
Sent as Conterminal> Watchlist with the subject Watchlist update: followed by the notification title, such as MSCU1234567 moved to Gate Out. The message carries a My Watchlist kicker, context chips such as Hot Load, Offsite Review, or a hold, and a summary table with Container, Contents, Status, the movement time, and Detected. Times are shown in US Eastern.
Your watchlist is the subscription.
This email is sent to the people who saved that specific container to My Watchlist — the Add to My Watchlist item in the action menu on a container detail page. There is no checkbox for it in Settings, and enabling everything in the Notifications panel will not produce a single one of these messages.
The states that raise one are At Terminal, Gate Out, Gate In, Hold Status, and Review Hold. LongShorty detects most of them when it signs into the terminal, rail, or steamship-line system; a manual edit in Conterminal can raise the same notification.
Hot Load, from alerts@conterminal.com
Sent as Conterminal> Alerts with the subject Hot Load marked: and the container number, when a delivery order is flipped from not hot to hot. The body names who marked it and at which company, then lists Container, Contents, Status, pickup and return terminals, and the time it was marked.
Hot Load mail goes to the reviewed To and CC addresses on that delivery order's email reply chain — usually the outside parties on the thread, not your teammates. If the delivery order has no send-eligible reply, nobody is emailed at all.
Tracking notes, from alerts@conterminal.com
Sent as Conterminal> Notes. If you were tagged, the subject is <Author> mentioned you on <container>; otherwise it is <Author> added a note on <container>. The message includes the whole discussion as chat bubbles, with your own notes on the right. Where reply-by-email is enabled, the top of the message reads --- Reply above this line to add a note --- and a plain reply posts back to the same tracking item.
Note mail has no opt-out.
Every user in every organization with access to that tracking item is emailed, whether or not they were mentioned and whether or not they have ever commented. The wording for non-mentioned recipients says the note was added to “a tracking item you've commented on,” which overstates how narrow the audience is. Nothing in Settings suppresses it.
The in-app activity drawer
Status changes also land in a drawer you can open from the operations homepage header, next to the clock. The button shows a count such as 4 recent updates and opens a panel titled Activity Feed.
- What is in it
- Status-change notifications for the active workspace from today only, newest first, capped at 100. The business day runs on US Eastern, so the list empties overnight rather than at your local midnight.
- How rows are marked viewed
- A row self-marks once at least 60 percent of it stays visible in the open drawer for two continuous seconds. Scrolling past quickly does not count. Viewed state is yours alone, not the workspace's.
An unviewed row carries an orange dot and is counted by the Unviewed badge in the drawer header. Mark all seen clears the count without opening anything; it is disabled when the count is zero. When there is nothing for today the drawer reads No status updates today.
The drawer and the watchlist email are independent. A move appears in the drawer for everyone in the workspace who can see the container, but it is only emailed to people who saved that container to My Watchlist.
What you cannot turn off
SQL Sync Merge Review has no preference switch.
This type is deliberately excluded from the Notifications panel, so it never appears as a checkbox and no one can subscribe or unsubscribe themselves. It is also the one type that emails nobody: the SQL sync reconcile writes the notification record straight to the database and skips the email fan-out entirely, so it surfaces only in the LongShorty admin notification feed, which links through to the SQL sync merge review screen. If you are waiting on one of these by email, it is not coming.
- SQL Sync Merge Review
- SQL sync found multiple delivery orders that may be the same shipment.
Two more routes ignore your checkboxes in the other direction. Every workspace notification that does send mail is also sent to the workspace notifications inbox address if one is configured, regardless of who has subscribed — that is a single shared address, changed by an admin, not a personal preference. And tracking-note mail, described above, is addressed from the access list for the item rather than from any subscription.
Warehouse workspaces and status changes
Warehouse workspaces receive no status-change notifications.
Delivery-order status changes are only published to carrier, forwarder, and importer workspaces. A warehouse workspace is filtered out before anything is written, so it gets no activity-feed rows and no watchlist status-change email for a container — even when the warehouse is named on the delivery order, and even with every box in Settings ticked.
Scheduling notifications behave differently: Schedule Proposed, Accepted, Rejected, and Capacity are published to the delivery order's owner, carrier, and warehouse organizations alike, so a warehouse workspace does receive appointment mail through the normal preference checkboxes. If a warehouse team needs container movement visibility, ask about access to a workspace that has it rather than waiting for mail that will not arrive.
Troubleshooting
No notification email is arriving at all
Confirm you saved the Notifications panel at least once in the workspace you are actually signed into, then check that the contact email shown in the Profile panel is the mailbox you are watching. Subscriptions use the workspace contact email, which can differ from your sign-in email. Then allowlist hello@conterminal.com and alerts@conterminal.com.
A colleague gets mail that I do not
Either they subscribed to that type in this workspace and you did not, or the mail is not preference-driven at all. Watchlist status changes follow whoever saved that container to My Watchlist, Hot Load mail follows the reviewed To and CC of the delivery order's email chain, and note mail follows everyone with access to the item.
The count is right but the email never came
The activity feed and the watchlist email are separate paths: the drawer shows the move to everyone in the workspace, while the email goes only to watchers. Save the container to My Watchlist if you want the mail.
I want out of operational mail
There is no unsubscribe link in these messages, because they are operational rather than marketing. Untick the types in Settings, remove containers from My Watchlist, and ask a teammate to take you off the item if note mail is the problem. For anything with no switch, contact support.
A demurrage or detention alert never fires
The type being enabled is not enough — a matching notification rule has to exist for your workspace, with a threshold in days, and the same delivery order and type are suppressed for 24 hours after a send. Contact support with the container number and the deadline you expected it to use.
Rows in the drawer will not clear
A row only self-marks after roughly two seconds of steady visibility, so fast scrolling leaves the count untouched. Use Mark all seen instead. Viewed state is per person, so a teammate's count is unaffected either way.