Configure Workspace Notifications and Alerts in Google

Set up email, in-app, and webhook notifications to stay informed about workspace activity, data changes, and system events in real time.

Staying on top of what matters in a busy workspace requires a notification system you can trust and tune. Google gives you three complementary channels — email, in-app, and webhook — so you can route the right alerts to the right place without drowning in noise. Use email notifications for asynchronous awareness, the in-app notification center for a live feed as you work in the dashboard, and webhooks when you need reliable, programmable delivery of events to external systems. This guide explains how to configure each channel, which events you can subscribe to, and how to set preferences like do-not-disturb hours and digest mode to keep interruptions under control.

Notification Types

Google supports three notification delivery channels, each suited to a different workflow:

Type	Delivery Method	Configurable?
Email	Sent to your verified account email address	✅ Yes — choose events and frequency
In-App	Displayed in the notification center inside the dashboard	✅ Yes — filter by event type
Webhook	HTTP POST to a URL you control	✅ Yes — fully configurable payload and event filters

All three channels can be active simultaneously. Configuring one does not affect the others, so you can enable email for billing events, in-app for mentions, and webhooks for data changes — all independently.

Configure Email Notifications

To manage email notifications, navigate to Settings → Notifications → Email. You’ll see a list of available event categories with toggles for each:

data.created

Receive an email whenever a new item — document, record, or note — is added to your workspace. Useful for team leads who want to monitor data ingestion activity.

data.updated

Get notified when an existing item is modified. You can scope this to items you own, items you’re watching, or all items in the workspace.

Mentions

Receive an email any time a team member @mentions you in a comment, annotation, or shared document. This is enabled by default for all accounts.

Billing

Stay informed about payment confirmations, failed charges, upcoming renewals, and plan changes. Billing notifications are sent to the workspace Owner’s email address by default but can be forwarded to additional addresses.

You can also set the email frequency for each category:

• Instant — sends an email immediately when the event occurs
• Hourly digest — batches events into a single email per hour
• Daily digest — one summary email per day (see Notification Preferences)

Configure In-App Notifications

The in-app notification center is the bell icon (🔔) in the top-right corner of the dashboard. A badge counter shows how many unread notifications you have. Click the icon to open the Notification Center, which displays a real-time feed of recent activity.

From the Notification Center you can:

• Mark as read — click a notification to open the related item, which marks it as read automatically
• Mark all as read — clear the unread badge with one click from the panel header
• Mark as unread — right-click any notification and select Mark as Unread to flag it for later review
• Filter by type — use the filter dropdown at the top of the panel to show only mentions, data events, or system alerts

In-app notifications are retained in the Notification Center for 90 days. After that they are automatically archived. You can access older notifications under Settings → Notifications → History.

Webhook Notifications

Webhooks give you real-time, programmatic delivery of workspace events to any HTTP endpoint you control. This is the most reliable channel for building integrations, triggering automation, or feeding events into a data pipeline. For full documentation on registering and validating webhooks, see Webhooks API reference.

To register a webhook, navigate to Settings → Notifications → Webhooks and click Add Webhook. Enter your endpoint URL and select the events you want to subscribe to. Google will send a POST request to your URL each time a matching event occurs.

Example webhook payload:

{
  "event": "data.created",
  "timestamp": "2024-06-01T10:00:00Z",
  "workspace_id": "ws_x7k29m",
  "data": {
    "id": "dat_abc123",
    "title": "New Report",
    "type": "document",
    "created_by": "user_88f1c2",
    "tags": ["finance", "Q2"]
  }
}

All webhook requests include a X-Google-Signature header containing an HMAC-SHA256 signature of the request body. Validate this signature using your webhook secret to confirm the request originated from Google and hasn’t been tampered with.

Available Events

Event	Description
data.created	A new item was added to the workspace
data.updated	An existing item was modified
data.deleted	An item was permanently deleted
member.invited	A new team member was invited
member.joined	An invited member accepted and joined
billing.payment_succeeded	A payment was processed successfully
billing.payment_failed	A payment attempt failed

Retry Behavior

If your endpoint returns a non-2xx HTTP status code or fails to respond within 10 seconds, Google will retry the delivery up to 5 times using an exponential backoff schedule:

• Retry 1: 30 seconds after failure
• Retry 2: 2 minutes
• Retry 3: 10 minutes
• Retry 4: 1 hour
• Retry 5: 6 hours

After 5 failed attempts, the delivery is marked as failed and logged in Settings → Notifications → Webhook Logs.

Notification Preferences

Fine-tune when and how you receive notifications under Settings → Notifications → Preferences:

Do Not Disturb

Set a daily time window during which no email or in-app notifications are delivered. Useful for protecting focus time or after-hours quiet. Webhook deliveries are not affected by Do Not Disturb.

Digest Mode

Instead of receiving individual emails for each event, enable Digest Mode to receive a single daily or weekly summary. The digest groups events by type and includes counts and links to the relevant items.

To configure these preferences, go to Settings → Notifications → Preferences, set your Do Not Disturb window using the time range pickers, and toggle Digest Mode to Daily or Weekly. Changes take effect immediately.

If you’re building an integration or automation that depends on workspace events, use webhooks rather than polling the API. Webhooks deliver events within seconds of occurrence and eliminate unnecessary API calls, making your integration more efficient and keeping you within your API rate limits.