Skip to main content
Most of what goes wrong in fulfillment is discussed somewhere — a chat group, a reply-all, a note stuck to a monitor. The point of putting it on the order is that the next person to open that order can see it.

​
The Communication Center

Everything addressed to you sits in one place, reached from the icon in the header. It has three tabs and a two-pane layout: the list on the left, the detail on the right. Each tab filters by All, Read or Unread, so the question “what have I not dealt with” is one click rather than a scroll.

​
Talking on the order

Comments live on the order itself. You can mention a colleague to bring them in, follow a thread to be told when it moves, and unfollow one that no longer concerns you. Read and unread state is tracked per person, so a thread being resolved for you says nothing about whether anyone else has seen it.
The value is what happens six weeks laterA conversation in a chat group is gone by the afternoon. The same conversation on the order is still there when a customer disputes the delivery, when finance queries the surcharge, or when a new joiner asks why that order was handled differently.It also removes the worst question in operations — “who was dealing with this?” — because the answer is on the record rather than in someone’s memory.

​
Notification settings

At Settings → Notifications, each person chooses what reaches them and how. Nineteen notification types across five groups, each with two independent switches — In-App and Email. Changes are committed with Save rather than applying as you toggle.

​
Order Management System

The Order Management System group of OTO notification settings, each row with an In-App and an Email toggle

Fig. 1 — Two switches per row, set independently. The pattern above is a realistic one — email for what needs acting on away from the screen, in-app for the rest.

​
Shipping Management System

Two of these are the ones that catch silent failuresShipment Creation Attempt Failed and SLA Breach both fire on situations where nothing else happens. A shipment that was never booked produces no status change, because nothing changed; a breached SLA produces no error at all.Every other notification here tells you about something that already worked. These two tell you about something that did not, which is why they are worth subscribing to even when the rest are muted.

​
Payments and Charges

Set the credit threshold high enough to be usefulThis is the notification that prevents an operational stop: run out of credit and shipments stop being created, which looks exactly like an integration failure to everyone downstream.The threshold should cover more than a day’s shipping, because it needs to leave time for somebody to notice, approve and pay. A number that gives you an hour’s warning gives you no warning at all.

​
Basic Warehouse Management System

​
General Announcement

The lower half of the notification settings screen, showing the OTO Credit Balance threshold field, stock notifications, and the announcement and notification sound controls

Fig. 2 — The credit threshold and the sound setting are ordinary rows on the same screen, easy to scroll past and worth setting deliberately.

Subscribe by role, not by appetiteThe temptation on a settings screen full of switches is to turn everything on. Two weeks later the notification center is unreadable and the one that mattered — an SLA breach, a surcharge — scrolled past unseen.The durable pattern is to decide per role. A warehouse manager wants Low Stock and Pickup Delay. Finance wants Surcharge. Customer service wants Delivery Failed. Almost nobody needs New Orders, because the orders list already says that and says it better.
Email for what needs acting on away from the screenThe two channels are independent on purpose. In-app is for someone already working in OTO; email is for reaching them when they are not.A useful rule: if a notification needs action within the hour and the person is not necessarily in the dashboard, send email too. Otherwise in-app alone, or the inbox stops being a signal.